7 ms·

From what I remember ALT.NET was pretty much a movement that was against Microsoft anti or ignorant OSS policies of the time. For instance NuGet was Microsoft'

by nbevans 10y ago

From what I remember ALT.NET was pretty much a movement that was against Microsoft anti or ignorant OSS policies of the time. For instance NuGet was Microsoft's project which completely ignored the fact that OpenWrap (an OSS project) had existed and was gaining momentum. But then NuGet came along and obviously the Microsoft loud speaker basically killed OpenWrap over night. That is just one example - but there are dozens of others. ALT.NET was also about the social aspect, such as Twitter, meetups and non-Microsoft-owned .NET conferences. I don't see the need for any kind of similar movement right now. Microsoft is firing on all cylinders and I believe it will only get stronger, wiser and bolder now. It isn't long now before the .NET CLR will replace the JVM as the open source standard on which enterprise apps are built (and more) - watch this space!

pjmlp 10y ago
> It isn't long now before the .NET CLR will replace the JVM as the open source standard on which enterprise apps are built (and more) - watch this space! I work with Java and .NET every day and the day our customers UNIX servers will run .NET is still very far away.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  >"I work with Java and .NET every day and the day our customers UNIX servers will run .NET is still very far away." Why's that true for the customers you mentioned?
  - ygra 10y ago
    Java has an enormous foothold in the enterprise with lots and lots of code running and often dating back years, if not a decade or more. That's not going to be replaced easily. The other thing is that Java users seem to be very averse to upgrading. We got a lot of backlash for releasing our newest library version for Java 8 only (so our API could offer a few niceties from that version and be less awkward to use), even though it's the only currently supported Java version by Oracle. We still have customers that use Java 1.4 ...
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Because .NET Core even with the .NET Standard 2.0 only covers part of the APIs for CLI and Web applications, and only targets GNU/Linux, OS X and Windows. Java is a complete platform, not only CLI and Web, has application servers like Websphere that offer a full server OS abstraction across the cluster and run in several flavours of enterprise grade UNIX and mainframes, not only GNU/Linux. Also every database worth using in the enterprise space has JDBC drivers, whereas good luck getting ADO.NET drivers or mainframe connectors for .NET Core on those platforms. And many of the .NET libraries don't run out of the box on either Mono or .NET Core, so unless they get ported, they won't be available. Oh, and as far as I am aware you still don't get performance monitoring tooling like the JetBrain products talking to .NET Core. Also they have legions of replaceable programmers used to Java, unless the IT department changes their infrastructure and spends money in trainings, it won't happen, even if .NET Core already had feature parity with Java.
    - nbevans 10y ago
      Do you know what "watch this space" means? ;) Enterprise apps are moving to the cloud; you need to think about the future not the past. Legacy JDBC drivers to connect to legacy RDBMS? Please! :)
      - lmickh 10y ago
        Curious to hear about these .Net Enterprise devs that are not using RDBMS. It is still very much the status quo even with services like Azure DocumentDB around. When you get a list of solid points about why Java won't be displaced and the response is watch this space, it reminds me of the folks saying "this is the year of the Linux desktop" without pointing to actual improvements coming to life. The "new" .Net CLR really only has a compelling story if you are already a .Net shop. Nothing in the new Core and Standard implementations gives you something new if you are outside of it.
        nbevans 10y ago
        There are non-legacy non-mainframey modern RDBMS you know! Hopefully I don't need to point out the very well publicised and ongoing efforts to revamp the .NET CLR and peripheral items to run on non-Windows systems.
blakeholl 10y ago
I think ALT.NET was one of the drivers for this change within Microsoft. Without it or something else like it, we may see the old MS patterns creep back slowly. I think it is good to have alternatives to a lot of the prescriptive MS frameworks and "best practices" - and I say this as a career MS, .NET developer.
- bartread 10y ago
  I'm not so sure. The leadership at Microsoft nowadays is quite different compared with back then. I do think the need for (something like) ALT.NET perhaps isn't there in the way it was back in 2007-09 because the software development, and particularly the web development, landscape has changed so much over the past 10 years.
  - dylanbeattie 10y ago
    One of the reasons we're keen to do this - or at least to try it! - is that both the industry and Microsoft have changed enormously in the last ten years. There's a much richer range of platforms available, and there's all sorts of new protocols and patterns we can use to integrate those platforms - and with stuff like containerization and serverless cloud functions, there's all kinds of interesting ways to use .NET and .NET Core as part of a larger heterogenous application stack. It will also be interesting - in the widest possible sense of the word - to see how the interactions between altnet and 2017-era Microsoft play out as compared to the 2007-era Microsoft. As the saying goes, watch this space :)

by nbevans 10y ago

pjmlp 10y ago

> It isn't long now before the .NET CLR will replace the JVM as the open source standard on which enterprise apps are built (and more) - watch this space! I work with Java and .NET every day and the day our customers UNIX servers will run .NET is still very far away.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
>"I work with Java and .NET every day and the day our customers UNIX servers will run .NET is still very far away." Why's that true for the customers you mentioned?
- ygra 10y ago
  Java has an enormous foothold in the enterprise with lots and lots of code running and often dating back years, if not a decade or more. That's not going to be replaced easily. The other thing is that Java users seem to be very averse to upgrading. We got a lot of backlash for releasing our newest library version for Java 8 only (so our API could offer a few niceties from that version and be less awkward to use), even though it's the only currently supported Java version by Oracle. We still have customers that use Java 1.4 ...
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Because .NET Core even with the .NET Standard 2.0 only covers part of the APIs for CLI and Web applications, and only targets GNU/Linux, OS X and Windows. Java is a complete platform, not only CLI and Web, has application servers like Websphere that offer a full server OS abstraction across the cluster and run in several flavours of enterprise grade UNIX and mainframes, not only GNU/Linux. Also every database worth using in the enterprise space has JDBC drivers, whereas good luck getting ADO.NET drivers or mainframe connectors for .NET Core on those platforms. And many of the .NET libraries don't run out of the box on either Mono or .NET Core, so unless they get ported, they won't be available. Oh, and as far as I am aware you still don't get performance monitoring tooling like the JetBrain products talking to .NET Core. Also they have legions of replaceable programmers used to Java, unless the IT department changes their infrastructure and spends money in trainings, it won't happen, even if .NET Core already had feature parity with Java.
  - nbevans 10y ago
    Do you know what "watch this space" means? ;) Enterprise apps are moving to the cloud; you need to think about the future not the past. Legacy JDBC drivers to connect to legacy RDBMS? Please! :)
    - lmickh 10y ago
      Curious to hear about these .Net Enterprise devs that are not using RDBMS. It is still very much the status quo even with services like Azure DocumentDB around. When you get a list of solid points about why Java won't be displaced and the response is watch this space, it reminds me of the folks saying "this is the year of the Linux desktop" without pointing to actual improvements coming to life. The "new" .Net CLR really only has a compelling story if you are already a .Net shop. Nothing in the new Core and Standard implementations gives you something new if you are outside of it.
      - nbevans 10y ago
        There are non-legacy non-mainframey modern RDBMS you know! Hopefully I don't need to point out the very well publicised and ongoing efforts to revamp the .NET CLR and peripheral items to run on non-Windows systems.

blakeholl 10y ago

I think ALT.NET was one of the drivers for this change within Microsoft. Without it or something else like it, we may see the old MS patterns creep back slowly. I think it is good to have alternatives to a lot of the prescriptive MS frameworks and "best practices" - and I say this as a career MS, .NET developer.

bartread 10y ago
I'm not so sure. The leadership at Microsoft nowadays is quite different compared with back then. I do think the need for (something like) ALT.NET perhaps isn't there in the way it was back in 2007-09 because the software development, and particularly the web development, landscape has changed so much over the past 10 years.
- dylanbeattie 10y ago
  One of the reasons we're keen to do this - or at least to try it! - is that both the industry and Microsoft have changed enormously in the last ten years. There's a much richer range of platforms available, and there's all sorts of new protocols and patterns we can use to integrate those platforms - and with stuff like containerization and serverless cloud functions, there's all kinds of interesting ways to use .NET and .NET Core as part of a larger heterogenous application stack. It will also be interesting - in the widest possible sense of the word - to see how the interactions between altnet and 2017-era Microsoft play out as compared to the 2007-era Microsoft. As the saying goes, watch this space :)