5 ms·

Have you ever applied? But really, if the MVP program was what it is said to be, people like you'd be in it. ServiceStack has been a valuable contribution to

by pknopf 8y ago

Have you ever applied? But really, if the MVP program was what it is said to be, people like you'd be in it. ServiceStack has been a valuable contribution to the .NET community, and your continued development/support of it should defacto make you an MVP.

mythz 8y ago
No, I wouldn't lend credence to a program that serves as an echo chamber to further insulate .NET's bubble. It's one of the marketing tools used to self-reinforce .NET's mono culture - which I view as the worst thing about .NET. It stopped being anything remotely to do with technical merit or being an "MVP" years ago. I'd prefer to see the program abolished, then maybe we'll start seeing more tech diversity in .NET.
- snuxoll 8y ago
  Thank you for speaking up about the monoculture in .NET, it’s a personal bugbear of mine working in a primarily .NET shop - for all the praise people like to heave on the NuGet package collection so much revolves around Microsoft’s own frameworks and supporting libraries and other products. People have arguments in JVM-land about why you should use X web framework or Y SQL/ORM library or Z foobaz. Too often in the .Net world I see complete dismissal of everything but ASP.Net MVC, EF+MSSQL, etc. Oh, and of course you should use Azure for everything. I freaking love F#, and to a lesser extent C# - but I can’t stand .NET as a whole because of this.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    A relative of mine manages a huge .NET shop in Texas and has said the same thing to me many times.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    i see people avoiding EF all the time
    - pknopf 8y ago
      Many people are choosing it because it's the blessed way of doing things, but it is crazy overkill and such a heavy hammer for many cases. There is rarely a case to use EF.
      - Solar19 8y ago
        What is EF?
        wantoncl 8y ago
        Entity Framework
      - sdfin 8y ago
        Does what you say also apply to EF Core? I don't know the previous EF version, but EF Core seemed simple to me. Particularly after comparing it with what I knew about Hibernate.
        pknopf 8y ago
        I have the same opinion on both. My default is to just use ADO.NET with Dapper or ServiceStack.OrmLite.
      - JamesBarney 8y ago
        Mind explaining this more? I love EF and how quickly you can get spin up a database and get started writing LINQ queries against it. Also how easy it is to get code reuse which is a pain in the butt with sql, or throw together a multi tenant app with global query filters.
        pknopf 8y ago
        You can quickly get a database spun up, but that time is offset by many of the warts that you'll run into later on. For example, you'll quickly realize you need to have ```AsNoTracking``` on your queries because the performance is terrible. You'll also find that you can batch update/delete items. I've also had problems with migrations after updating EF Core (don't remember exactly). You can get spun up quickly, with Linq, using something like Dapper or ServiceStack.OrmLite. They work on raw ADO.NET, so they are incredibly easy to reason/work with. The errors that you'd run into wont be shrouded in layers/abstractions that are specific to EF/Core.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    Say what you will about Java -- Oracle are shitheads and Java was late to the generics and lambda parties -- but it deserves full props for getting the most influential free software organization that doesn't involve RMS or ESR, the Apache Foundation, on board in the late nineties, and that has shaped the Java ecosystem to this day and made it more open and inclusive. Still not ideal, but it's the enterprise platform I trust the most.
    - ncmncm 8y ago
      I thought the Apache Foundation was where projects go to die, or to wallow in irrelevance, or something. Is OpenOffice still there?
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Apache Foundation played a very crucial role fostering Java FOSS community.
        ncmncm 8y ago
        One could draw a corollary, there, about Java. But it might be perceived as invidious.
      - EdwardDiego 8y ago
        Seems to be a few lively projects in here. https://apache.org/index.html#projects-list https://apache.org/index.html#projects-list Kafka, Hadoop, Flink, Ant, Maven, Impala, Parquet, Avro, Spark...
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Oracle has done a lot for Java, which has stagnant under Sun, is a member of the community since 1996 when they presented alongside Sun the NC running a Java based OS, and besides IBM no one else cared about Sun's future. Even Google if they wanted to actually get away with their little action, could have taken the opportunity to own Java.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Being on a Java/.NET/C++ shop, I hardly notice a difference between Java and .NET mono-cultures. It was mostly JEE or Spring, Swing or SWT, Ant or Maven, .... everything else tends to be loved in online forums but hardly seen live across the globe. Stack Overflow recent survey results are yet another proof of it, every JVM language that is going to "replace" Java is stuck in single digit percentage.
    - snuxoll 8y ago
      > Being on a Java/.NET/C++ shop, I hardly notice a difference between Java and .NET mono-cultures. Don't confuse your corporate monoculture for a monoculture of an entire ecosystem. > It was mostly JEE or Spring, Swing or SWT, Ant or Maven, .... everything else tends to be loved in online forums but hardly seen live across the globe. Yeah, big frameworks are still popular, nothing surprising about that. Thing is, these big frameworks are usually designed to be modular out of the box - if you don't like a certain component don't use it and pull in something else. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and there is plenty of choice for individual parts of your stack without nixing Spring Framework or CDI. Hell, even if you do you have micro-frameworks like Dropwizard that are just various components welded together because the ecosystem makes doing it fairly easy. > Stack Overflow recent survey results are yet another proof of it, every JVM language that is going to "replace" Java is stuck in single digit percentage. And? Nothing "needs" to replace the language, though nothing until Kotlin has ever been in a position to even be a #2. Scala can't stop breaking compatibility every release, nobody ever heard of Ceylon, Groovy & Clojure don't fit the same statically-typed niche. All of these work though, and they all can share code with each other so it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game either.
      - zmmmmm 8y ago
        > And? Nothing "needs" to replace the language, though I think this is a really important thing about JVM langauges. They can exist successfully at much lower thresholds of popularity because they piggy back on Java. So I don't have to worry about Groovy dying off (which is not to say it is) - because basically as long as Java is around it is going to have access to a giant community of developers. So using Groovy or Clojure or Scala etc is a much lower risk proposition than jumping in the deep end with a stand alone language. In that sense, Groovy / Clojure / Scala / Kotlin don't really compete with each other or Java as much as help each other, and Java's popularity is really the sum of all of them.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    One of the things I love about .NET is the monoculture. It means that I can jump on any .net stack and have extensive experience with their ORM, their IDE, their language, their sql database, their mvc framework, their front end language, and even their mobile stack. It's one of the few stacks that truly allows you to be a full stack developer with ease. I love solving algorithmic problems, I love data modelling, I love learning about the domain, I love solving software engineering problems to deliver useful software people love. I dont like spending time going through documentation and learning yet another technology that accomplishes the same thing. 98% of projects can be accomplished just as well with react or Angular, typescript or Vue, mysql or sql server, hibernate or EF, asp.net mvc or Nancy, c# or f#, git or tfs, Asana or VSTS. These decisions don't matter nearly as much as the expertise of the team. So it's nice to be able to field or join a team of experts on every part of the stack and focus on solving problems with technology and not the technology.
    - deanCommie 8y ago
      Only if you ignore the entire .NET OSS community, most of which puts out better versions of everything you list than the default Microsoft stuff. I do think I understand your point - there is comfort in knowing there is one default solution for almost every abstraction. But how much can you love it when each one tends to be mediocre? Disclosure: I spent 10 years working on .NET from 2006 to 2016 , so I've missed the last revolution of .NET Core, so maybe things got better?
      - JamesBarney 8y ago
        Webforms was absolutely awful and I've worked with technologies so terrible they single handedly sank projects.[0] . But I've never found that modern .NET defaults were so terrible it wasn't made up for by the voluminous amounts of documentation(not just official documentation but stack overflows/blog posts etc) that you get from the default option. Whatever weird issue you end up running into there is a documented fix which can save anywhere from hours to days of time.. Not sure what you worked on but .NET has gotten better since 2016 but not by leaps and bounds(exception EF Core is leaps and bounds better than the prev. version). I've always thought asp.net mvc was good, newest one is better but not by a huge margin. Original EF was bad but EF Core is far better. TFS was mediocre but now everyone uses git. Typescript is absolutely delightful. Xamarin's kind of painful but all cross platform mobile development seems to be. Visual Studio is probably best in class of the heavy duty IDE's. I've heard complaints about nuget but it always seems reliable which is more than I can say about npm. The work item tracking kind of sucks but it makes up for it with streamlined integration from the IDE->commit->task tracking->time tracking->reporting->invoicing. The part of the stack that always bothered me were the poorly designed DevExpress/Infragistics controls that were ubiquitous. They get weird impossible to debug errors. They seem to trade extensibility for endless amounts of configuration. But with modern .NET applications you don't see them anymore which has brought me great joy. [0] - One time upper management forced all of the devs in the organization to use a high performance real time database that fell down with 200 points/minute. And would sometimes(monthly) crash so hard both the data and the installation and sometimes the vm were unrecoverable. It took 3 days to install and we required one full time person on a team of 5 whose full time job(she was working 60 hr weeks) was just to keep 3 instances running(Dev/test/stage).
cardiffspaceman 8y ago
Not your OP, but when I was in the program it was because MSFT people found me and awarded it to me based on posts I had already done. I didn't apply. It was in 1992 when the big transition to Windows 3.1 was underway. I had already been assisting people with Windows programming questions on Compuserve, because of my belief that it was then an important transition. I believed it was going to be easier than people thought, and my aid was meant to help people see this. When my priorities changed and I stopped posting, MSFT didn't award me MVP status again. The MSFT self-interest was that the awards were things that made it easier for us to post more, such as comp'ing the minutes we spent in the Windows forum on Compuserve and the like. Although I heard rumors of MSFT leaders/liasons encouraging individuals to post after their awards, I didn't get such communications personally. I bet it's all different now but I have had not been involved.
- cardiffspaceman 8y ago
  Reading the fine article I can see that the program continued to be in essence the program I participated in, with more responsibility on the participant's part to keep MSFT informed of why one might deserve the award, and less support of late for folks posting intensely technical material such as DDK.
otis_inf 8y ago
I've been a C# MVP for many years before they didn't renew me because I was too critical towards MS' direction (this was before they OSS-ed .NET). When I was awarded, it felt like I received an award for my position in the .NET community. When I didn't get a renewal years later it felt like I didn't get it because I didn't fit into their marketing machine. It was fine by me btw. The free MSDN universal subscription is nice, but that's about it. > ServiceStack has been a valuable contribution to the .NET community, and your continued development/support of it should defacto make you an MVP. Yes, and back in the days when I received my MVP title, this kind of thinking was part of the criteria. Nowadays... no way. It started 7-8 years ago I think when they decided there couldn't be more than X mvp's for a given category and they wanted at least Y mvp's in a given region. So less in the west, and more in say India. While it's fine to make it a more world-wide program and recognize people in communities which are less known to people in 'the west', the criteria to accomplish this changed with it: if you started a user group somewhere in a region without an mvp and someone nominated you, you had a good chance becoming one. This is all OK btw, if your criteria is about evangelizing. If your criteria is about 'the people who are the most skilled in ABC' then it's not. So this shift in who would receive the award changed the program. Nowadays it's rather silly tbh. If you want to get renewed you have to fill in a form where you describe why you want to get renewed. wtf... it's an award you receive. Why would you need to tell MS why you'd want to receive an award you haven't received yet as they decide who gets it...
- close04 8y ago
  I see the same thing happening with almost all "most valuable" type awards or badges. Every big tech company that has it now uses it almost exclusively as a PR campaign. The MV% roster of some companies looks more like a list of social media influencers than a list of truly most valuable professionals, with the latter losing ground year after year.
sqldba 8y ago
You can no longer apply, they did away with that last year.

by pknopf 8y ago

mythz 8y ago

No, I wouldn't lend credence to a program that serves as an echo chamber to further insulate .NET's bubble. It's one of the marketing tools used to self-reinforce .NET's mono culture - which I view as the worst thing about .NET. It stopped being anything remotely to do with technical merit or being an "MVP" years ago. I'd prefer to see the program abolished, then maybe we'll start seeing more tech diversity in .NET.

snuxoll 8y ago
Thank you for speaking up about the monoculture in .NET, it’s a personal bugbear of mine working in a primarily .NET shop - for all the praise people like to heave on the NuGet package collection so much revolves around Microsoft’s own frameworks and supporting libraries and other products. People have arguments in JVM-land about why you should use X web framework or Y SQL/ORM library or Z foobaz. Too often in the .Net world I see complete dismissal of everything but ASP.Net MVC, EF+MSSQL, etc. Oh, and of course you should use Azure for everything. I freaking love F#, and to a lesser extent C# - but I can’t stand .NET as a whole because of this.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  A relative of mine manages a huge .NET shop in Texas and has said the same thing to me many times.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  i see people avoiding EF all the time
  - pknopf 8y ago
    Many people are choosing it because it's the blessed way of doing things, but it is crazy overkill and such a heavy hammer for many cases. There is rarely a case to use EF.
    - Solar19 8y ago
      What is EF?
      - wantoncl 8y ago
        Entity Framework
    - sdfin 8y ago
      Does what you say also apply to EF Core? I don't know the previous EF version, but EF Core seemed simple to me. Particularly after comparing it with what I knew about Hibernate.
      - pknopf 8y ago
        I have the same opinion on both. My default is to just use ADO.NET with Dapper or ServiceStack.OrmLite.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      Mind explaining this more? I love EF and how quickly you can get spin up a database and get started writing LINQ queries against it. Also how easy it is to get code reuse which is a pain in the butt with sql, or throw together a multi tenant app with global query filters.
      - pknopf 8y ago
        You can quickly get a database spun up, but that time is offset by many of the warts that you'll run into later on. For example, you'll quickly realize you need to have ```AsNoTracking``` on your queries because the performance is terrible. You'll also find that you can batch update/delete items. I've also had problems with migrations after updating EF Core (don't remember exactly). You can get spun up quickly, with Linq, using something like Dapper or ServiceStack.OrmLite. They work on raw ADO.NET, so they are incredibly easy to reason/work with. The errors that you'd run into wont be shrouded in layers/abstractions that are specific to EF/Core.
- bitwize 8y ago
  Say what you will about Java -- Oracle are shitheads and Java was late to the generics and lambda parties -- but it deserves full props for getting the most influential free software organization that doesn't involve RMS or ESR, the Apache Foundation, on board in the late nineties, and that has shaped the Java ecosystem to this day and made it more open and inclusive. Still not ideal, but it's the enterprise platform I trust the most.
  - ncmncm 8y ago
    I thought the Apache Foundation was where projects go to die, or to wallow in irrelevance, or something. Is OpenOffice still there?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Apache Foundation played a very crucial role fostering Java FOSS community.
      - ncmncm 8y ago
        One could draw a corollary, there, about Java. But it might be perceived as invidious.
    - EdwardDiego 8y ago
      Seems to be a few lively projects in here. https://apache.org/index.html#projects-list https://apache.org/index.html#projects-list Kafka, Hadoop, Flink, Ant, Maven, Impala, Parquet, Avro, Spark...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Oracle has done a lot for Java, which has stagnant under Sun, is a member of the community since 1996 when they presented alongside Sun the NC running a Java based OS, and besides IBM no one else cared about Sun's future. Even Google if they wanted to actually get away with their little action, could have taken the opportunity to own Java.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Being on a Java/.NET/C++ shop, I hardly notice a difference between Java and .NET mono-cultures. It was mostly JEE or Spring, Swing or SWT, Ant or Maven, .... everything else tends to be loved in online forums but hardly seen live across the globe. Stack Overflow recent survey results are yet another proof of it, every JVM language that is going to "replace" Java is stuck in single digit percentage.
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    > Being on a Java/.NET/C++ shop, I hardly notice a difference between Java and .NET mono-cultures. Don't confuse your corporate monoculture for a monoculture of an entire ecosystem. > It was mostly JEE or Spring, Swing or SWT, Ant or Maven, .... everything else tends to be loved in online forums but hardly seen live across the globe. Yeah, big frameworks are still popular, nothing surprising about that. Thing is, these big frameworks are usually designed to be modular out of the box - if you don't like a certain component don't use it and pull in something else. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and there is plenty of choice for individual parts of your stack without nixing Spring Framework or CDI. Hell, even if you do you have micro-frameworks like Dropwizard that are just various components welded together because the ecosystem makes doing it fairly easy. > Stack Overflow recent survey results are yet another proof of it, every JVM language that is going to "replace" Java is stuck in single digit percentage. And? Nothing "needs" to replace the language, though nothing until Kotlin has ever been in a position to even be a #2. Scala can't stop breaking compatibility every release, nobody ever heard of Ceylon, Groovy & Clojure don't fit the same statically-typed niche. All of these work though, and they all can share code with each other so it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game either.
    - zmmmmm 8y ago
      > And? Nothing "needs" to replace the language, though I think this is a really important thing about JVM langauges. They can exist successfully at much lower thresholds of popularity because they piggy back on Java. So I don't have to worry about Groovy dying off (which is not to say it is) - because basically as long as Java is around it is going to have access to a giant community of developers. So using Groovy or Clojure or Scala etc is a much lower risk proposition than jumping in the deep end with a stand alone language. In that sense, Groovy / Clojure / Scala / Kotlin don't really compete with each other or Java as much as help each other, and Java's popularity is really the sum of all of them.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  One of the things I love about .NET is the monoculture. It means that I can jump on any .net stack and have extensive experience with their ORM, their IDE, their language, their sql database, their mvc framework, their front end language, and even their mobile stack. It's one of the few stacks that truly allows you to be a full stack developer with ease. I love solving algorithmic problems, I love data modelling, I love learning about the domain, I love solving software engineering problems to deliver useful software people love. I dont like spending time going through documentation and learning yet another technology that accomplishes the same thing. 98% of projects can be accomplished just as well with react or Angular, typescript or Vue, mysql or sql server, hibernate or EF, asp.net mvc or Nancy, c# or f#, git or tfs, Asana or VSTS. These decisions don't matter nearly as much as the expertise of the team. So it's nice to be able to field or join a team of experts on every part of the stack and focus on solving problems with technology and not the technology.
  - deanCommie 8y ago
    Only if you ignore the entire .NET OSS community, most of which puts out better versions of everything you list than the default Microsoft stuff. I do think I understand your point - there is comfort in knowing there is one default solution for almost every abstraction. But how much can you love it when each one tends to be mediocre? Disclosure: I spent 10 years working on .NET from 2006 to 2016 , so I've missed the last revolution of .NET Core, so maybe things got better?
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      Webforms was absolutely awful and I've worked with technologies so terrible they single handedly sank projects.[0] . But I've never found that modern .NET defaults were so terrible it wasn't made up for by the voluminous amounts of documentation(not just official documentation but stack overflows/blog posts etc) that you get from the default option. Whatever weird issue you end up running into there is a documented fix which can save anywhere from hours to days of time.. Not sure what you worked on but .NET has gotten better since 2016 but not by leaps and bounds(exception EF Core is leaps and bounds better than the prev. version). I've always thought asp.net mvc was good, newest one is better but not by a huge margin. Original EF was bad but EF Core is far better. TFS was mediocre but now everyone uses git. Typescript is absolutely delightful. Xamarin's kind of painful but all cross platform mobile development seems to be. Visual Studio is probably best in class of the heavy duty IDE's. I've heard complaints about nuget but it always seems reliable which is more than I can say about npm. The work item tracking kind of sucks but it makes up for it with streamlined integration from the IDE->commit->task tracking->time tracking->reporting->invoicing. The part of the stack that always bothered me were the poorly designed DevExpress/Infragistics controls that were ubiquitous. They get weird impossible to debug errors. They seem to trade extensibility for endless amounts of configuration. But with modern .NET applications you don't see them anymore which has brought me great joy. [0] - One time upper management forced all of the devs in the organization to use a high performance real time database that fell down with 200 points/minute. And would sometimes(monthly) crash so hard both the data and the installation and sometimes the vm were unrecoverable. It took 3 days to install and we required one full time person on a team of 5 whose full time job(she was working 60 hr weeks) was just to keep 3 instances running(Dev/test/stage).

cardiffspaceman 8y ago

Not your OP, but when I was in the program it was because MSFT people found me and awarded it to me based on posts I had already done. I didn't apply. It was in 1992 when the big transition to Windows 3.1 was underway. I had already been assisting people with Windows programming questions on Compuserve, because of my belief that it was then an important transition. I believed it was going to be easier than people thought, and my aid was meant to help people see this. When my priorities changed and I stopped posting, MSFT didn't award me MVP status again. The MSFT self-interest was that the awards were things that made it easier for us to post more, such as comp'ing the minutes we spent in the Windows forum on Compuserve and the like. Although I heard rumors of MSFT leaders/liasons encouraging individuals to post after their awards, I didn't get such communications personally. I bet it's all different now but I have had not been involved.

cardiffspaceman 8y ago
Reading the fine article I can see that the program continued to be in essence the program I participated in, with more responsibility on the participant's part to keep MSFT informed of why one might deserve the award, and less support of late for folks posting intensely technical material such as DDK.

otis_inf 8y ago

I've been a C# MVP for many years before they didn't renew me because I was too critical towards MS' direction (this was before they OSS-ed .NET). When I was awarded, it felt like I received an award for my position in the .NET community. When I didn't get a renewal years later it felt like I didn't get it because I didn't fit into their marketing machine. It was fine by me btw. The free MSDN universal subscription is nice, but that's about it. > ServiceStack has been a valuable contribution to the .NET community, and your continued development/support of it should defacto make you an MVP. Yes, and back in the days when I received my MVP title, this kind of thinking was part of the criteria. Nowadays... no way. It started 7-8 years ago I think when they decided there couldn't be more than X mvp's for a given category and they wanted at least Y mvp's in a given region. So less in the west, and more in say India. While it's fine to make it a more world-wide program and recognize people in communities which are less known to people in 'the west', the criteria to accomplish this changed with it: if you started a user group somewhere in a region without an mvp and someone nominated you, you had a good chance becoming one. This is all OK btw, if your criteria is about evangelizing. If your criteria is about 'the people who are the most skilled in ABC' then it's not. So this shift in who would receive the award changed the program. Nowadays it's rather silly tbh. If you want to get renewed you have to fill in a form where you describe why you want to get renewed. wtf... it's an award you receive. Why would you need to tell MS why you'd want to receive an award you haven't received yet as they decide who gets it...

close04 8y ago
I see the same thing happening with almost all "most valuable" type awards or badges. Every big tech company that has it now uses it almost exclusively as a PR campaign. The MV% roster of some companies looks more like a list of social media influencers than a list of truly most valuable professionals, with the latter losing ground year after year.

sqldba 8y ago

You can no longer apply, they did away with that last year.