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Building a Startup - Defending .NET

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Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#31

Post by Hominem »

I see some of the .net hate starting to seep into the corporate world as well. I work as a .net developer for a very large corporation and there is more and more talk of re-implementing production applications in Python. The perceived problem is poor code quality. It is an uphill battle to convince people that this problem is not going to be fixed by switching to Ruby if we continue to produce code by lowest bid.

I think there is a difference in .net developers and Ruby or Python developers. There is a much higher demand for .net developers so many people who had some aptitude for computers picked it up to get a job. Seems to me, people who went through the effort and sought out Ruby or Python take extra pride in the craft of programming. I would say there are just as many .net developers who care about the code they produce, but they are background noise in the sea of mediocre talents. The prospect of finding them in that sea is pretty daunting.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#32

Post by tansey »

mindcrime wrote: post #25
tansey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, "I'm buying a MBP" translates to "I'm serious about startups"? Well, that was tongue in cheek. But really, just the opposite-- I'm saying that I'm a total tool who's caved in to the trendy peer pressure of the startup culture. That culture shuns .NET on principal and there's lots of pressure to never use it for a startup. And if you don't believe there's peer pressure to use a MBP, try going to Red Rock or th…

And if you don't believe there's peer pressure to use a MBP, try going to Red Rock or the Dojo with an Acer laptop. You can just feel people judging you. And? Unless you're trying to sell them something, who gives a rats-ass what they think? :-)

Again, tongue in cheek. :)

Though I am really buying a MBP tomorrow. I'm doing it because I need a new laptop and I like the new MBP-- but you can be sure I'll have it setup to do Windows 7 in dual boot from day 1.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#33

Post by tansey »

Hominem wrote: post #31

I see some of the .net hate starting to seep into the corporate world as well. I work as a .net developer for a very large corporation and there is more and more talk of re-implementing production applications in Python. The perceived problem is poor code quality. It is an uphill battle to convince people that this problem is not going to be fixed by switching to Ruby if we continue to produce code by lowest bid. I t…

If both of those are true, then doesn't that mean a whole wave of sub-par Ruby and Python developers are coming our way in the next few years?

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#34

Post by Hominem »

jschrf wrote: post #17
tansey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I changed the link to the "don't hire .NET programmers" article. I stand by the rest of the references, though. All the guys I mention in my last point are as much hackers as anyone I've ever met or worked with.

Wow, that article is full of all sorts of stupid. Someone should tell the author that .NET is not a language (not that it'll make a difference). I find this part particularly hilarious: "However, if you need to make a 1.7 oz burger, you simply can’t. There’s no button for it. The patties are pre-formed in the wrong size. They start out frozen so they can’t be smushed up and reformed, and the thawing machine is so tig…

I had a lot of problems with that article as well. But I'd still like the give the author the benefit of the doubt. I assume he has very narrow experience with some framework like webforms or ran into some developers who did. With a lot of microsoft's frameworks it is easy to get stuck at a simple problem with no obvious solution, and conclude that there is no possible way to do it within that framework. Most of the time if you keep digging , you will find that there usually is a simple, elegant way to solve your problem but many people just give up, and decide that Microsoft just sucks.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#35

Post by Hominem »

tansey wrote: post #33
Hominem wrote: post #31

I see some of the .net hate starting to seep into the corporate world as well. I work as a .net developer for a very large corporation and there is more and more talk of re-implementing production applications in Python. The perceived problem is poor code quality. It is an uphill battle to convince people that this problem is not going to be fixed by switching to Ruby if we continue to produce code by lowest bid. I t…

If both of those are true, then doesn't that mean a whole wave of sub-par Ruby and Python developers are coming our way in the next few years?

Yes, I'm pretty sure I will see the staffing firms send me back the same developers, but now they will be Ruby experts.

Maybe this is less about .net/other languages and more about what makes development so terrible in large corporations. But keep in mind most .net developers, of which I am one, are products or large corporate development .

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#36

Post by _debug_ »

I do not even see the need for justification : After LINQ and Rx and the maturing of Mono, .NET is now far ahead of the Java ecosystem, even including Scala 2.9, in terms of developer productivity. The only reason I am having to learn Scala is that I am already quite familiar with the Java ecosystem (having used it at work for many years before I started doing something on my own) and do not wish to start from scratch in the .NET world.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#37

Post by city41 »

latch wrote: post #2

Same as most other posts defending one technology choice versus others. It's what I know best...I like the tools...can't we all get along... The only interesting point is also the vaguest...The AI that's already available in .NET (and, by the way it's stated, apparently not in others). I also have to counterpoint that ASP.NET MVC is "conceptually" the same as Rails/Django. Conceptual similarities are pretty meaningle…

> ASP.NET MVC is closer to WebForms than Rails.

Could you please elaborate on this? I've written many websites in all three technologies and I don't see how standard ASP.NET is at all like ASP.NET MVC. Standard ASP.NET is a train wreck and a simply abysmal environment to be stuck in. People managed to make successful websites in spite of it, not because of it. ASP.NET MVC may be a bit behind the times and a total rip off of Rails and MonoRail, but it's one of the best things Microsoft has ever made.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#38

Post by denysonique »

jschrf wrote: post #8

.NET is great. It's fast, clean, and the framework libs are incredibly good. C#, IronPython, and F# are amazing. I still haven't found an IDE that compares to VS in terms of productivity and usability. Despite all the things going for it, it's decidely un-trendy and people hate on it. I'm guessing it's primarily because it's from Microsoft. Software trends are silly.

IDE's are for _lusers_. Vim FTW! And Emacs is cool too. Vim can do more than any IDE (fantastic built by the community plugins). And imho one needs to be retarded if one uses something else than hjkl or C-n, C-p, to navigate within a text document.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#39

Post by jschrf »

charlieflowers wrote: post #29
jschrf wrote: post #8

.NET is great. It's fast, clean, and the framework libs are incredibly good. C#, IronPython, and F# are amazing. I still haven't found an IDE that compares to VS in terms of productivity and usability. Despite all the things going for it, it's decidely un-trendy and people hate on it. I'm guessing it's primarily because it's from Microsoft. Software trends are silly.

It's true. .NET, and C# especially, is one of the few things Microsoft really got right. Anders H is a genius -- he showed it when he did Turbo Pascal, he showed it with Delphi, and he continues to show it with every new release of C#. Did you know that C# has: lambdas, closures, optional duck typing, first-class functions, better generics than Java, and type inference that is sometimes spooky? Really, the only flaw…

"Did you know that C# has: lambdas, closures, optional duck typing, first-class functions, better generics than Java, and type inference that is sometimes spooky?"

I did know that, and these things heavily factor into why I default to C# for most projects these days! .NET 4 is awesome.

C# is an excellent language. It has all these great things, yet doesn't feel polluted or bloated at all. I absolutely love lambdas, closures, and generics. They help write concise and clear code. Generic support in C# and F# and the CLR itself is brilliant.

Writing event-driven, asynchronous IO code in .NET code is a breeze. It seems like the current programming trend around these parts is focused on "iterating fast" and having async IO. C# gives me both of these things, with the bonus of having the compiler catch most of my errors.

I disagree with the general notion that duck-typed languages are more empowering or let you iterate faster than strongly typed languages.

If you think that a language that is lazy (or worse, unspecific) about types lets you write code faster, I think that you have some fundamental problems with how you approach development.

The whole dynamic languages = faster code production is an unsettling school of thought, in my opinion.

Re: Building a Startup - Defending .NET

#40

Post by mindcrime »

tansey wrote: post #32
mindcrime wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you don't believe there's peer pressure to use a MBP, try going to Red Rock or the Dojo with an Acer laptop. You can just feel people judging you. And? Unless you're trying to sell them something, who gives a rats-ass what they think? :-)

Again, tongue in cheek. :) Though I am really buying a MBP tomorrow. I'm doing it because I need a new laptop and I like the new MBP-- but you can be sure I'll have it setup to do Windows 7 in dual boot from day 1.

but you can be sure I'll have it setup to do Windows 7

Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww..... boo, hiss. Windows?!??

Sorry, when you mentioned a PC based laptop, I assumed it would have been running Linux (or BSD or Plan9 or Minix or some other proper operating system.) :-)

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