Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

v3 is still pretty good though. I was hoping that some eager people would fork it to keep it going, but it looks like the interest is smaller than I hoped. Maybe I'll pick it up myself one day.

The core of ServiceStack (services, messages, routes; that part) is so well designed that I simply refuse giving up on it. I think that if I were to use a different language for whatever project, I'd probably rather spend many evenings reimplementing those core concepts than going with something less good (such as the common one-method-call per URL pattern of MVC WebAPI, Rails controllers, Sinatra, Flask, etc etc etc).

I'd probably buy ServiceStack v4 if it wasn't so outrageously expensive.

Its weird that the HN crowd just seems to assume that the advice to use linux and mono just has to be a better idea than using windows.

If you haven't looked at windows since 2003 you really need to take a look at server 2012 R2. The default installation mode is server core. It requires dramatically fewer patches. Management with PowerShell is incredibly powerful. IIS has seen many, many improvements.

Also, "developing your app for azure" is a weird statement. If you develop for Azure Websites you are literally just writing an asp.net web app or api. it runs in IIS in a VM. It just has some management wrapped around it so that you don't have to take care of the VM(s). It has autscale, monitoring, and all the stuff you would expect from a cloud provider. Writing your app to use SQL Azure, or Azure storage, or something like that is just like using the comparable services from Amazon. It's like anything else...you should implement its usage as an interface so you can swap it out if need be.

Some people on HN have accused me of working for MS just because I use their stuff. I'm not, nor have I ever been, a MS employee. I'll admit that I started looking into windows a couple of years ago because I was bored with Linux and Unix. I've found that if you put the time in to understand how it works its incredibly productive and thorough. If you try to make it work like unix it will suck. If you learn PowerShell and stay away from the "clickety-clickety" thing it's awesome.

From a development standpoint I actually like the total stack approach...but that's me. If you need to use best of breed components you can still do that with .Net. For me though, my interests shifted to C++ a while ago, so .Net stuff for web api's get's the work done when I have to do it. I would like to see more stuff like openstack in the .net world, but system center is fine. The stuff that I do ends up being important enough for enterprises that getting funds for that kind of thing is just part of the package.

That's another thing. I'm completely uninterested in startups. I've worked at startups in various roles in the past and I'm just over it. Any startup that I built would have to be something that I could run by myself that immediately made money that I would keep. Investment funding is shit. It's a hassle that is super crazy. Dealing with "business" types that aren't technical enough to understand the challenges is also completely off the table. If you did choose to work with a VC then it's much better to be making money and talking about selling out totally instead of implanting them in your life. Shudder.

The one thing that I think Windows needs is a container style app deployment model. The coolest thing going in large scale app building is CoreOS. Its the future of how a large scale app will be built and deployed.

The new, and much loathed, metro applications are actually a good starting place for building a container system. They use feature called "app containers" that was first introduced in Vista. Add to that an app package that installs and uninstalls as a unit, called APPX. They haven't made any noise about using the new app model for servers, but it would be a great idea. It uses an API monitor that stops calls to things like LoadLibrary or GetProcAddress and all the other API's that let you bootstrap malware. Anyway, like I said, they haven't made any noise about it...it would be cool though.

IntelliJ, VS, Eclipse, xCode in that order.

"You need expensive Windows Servers to host your stuff..."

I guess that depends on your definition of expensive. I've hosted my .NET stuff with http://www.discountasp.net for years and yes, they're not free, they're cheap. There are cheaper alternatives than them for IIS, but I like them. They provide a good service. Free doesn't float my boat because I don't want to worry about platform installation, patching and so on. I don't want to do more than FTP to publish.

Also interesting is that I could move to Azure without making a single change to my code. So Azure doesn't lock me into anything either.

"But that's [.NET] just a dependency when you opt for the Microsoft world"

Yes. It is a dependency. If I used Node, then Node.js would be a dependency. If I used Rails, then Rails would be a dependency. I don't get that dependency problem - we're all of us always going to be dependent on something, somewhere. Unless you code up your own OS, stack and tools, and make your own hardware.

Lock-in to Micro$oft is also something I've yet to hear a commercially convincing argument against. Is it really so bad? They've been around since the 80's. They're not going to disappear soon either. They strike me as a safe bet. Why is lock-in such an issue?

If vendor dependence is really such an issue, then design (architecture, if you will) is your mitigation. Abstraction solves that problem (actually any problem, bar performance).

As ever, when I hear these arguments against Microsoft and the .NET stack I hear consistency bias. Our nearly obsessive desire to be (and appear to be) consistent with what we have already done. Once we've made a choice, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.

Node.js is cool. So is LAMP, .NET, COBOL and GW BASIC. Your choice is the right choice. For you. For your situation. If you're going to throw stones at my choice (not saying you are), I'd like to hear how lock-in to Microsoft will burn me. And after 14 years of hosting my stuff on IIS and developing with the Express Editions of Visual Studio, I'd love to know how it is more expensive than something else that provides a comparable development experience and service.

I've worked with C# and .NET for years. I agree that C# is a great language. I prefer working with the JVM and Linux ecosystems, though. On my latest project I decided to use Scala for the backend. I have access to a wealth of great libraries and services, and I actually prefer working with Scala than with C#.