5 ms·

You don't see it on HN much but the Windows world is still massive, and there are still plenty of ASP.NET folk around. I'd suppose you only have to take half a

by dmw_ng 6y ago

You don't see it on HN much but the Windows world is still massive, and there are still plenty of ASP.NET folk around. I'd suppose you only have to take half a footstep outside the "pure Internet services" sphere to start bumping into lots of Windows, in pretty much any direction you happen to step. There are also whole industries where Windows has a particularly strong influence, e.g. (from experience) some parts of finance, petroleum, television, and I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work that might have grown out of a once Windows-only desktop software cottage industry. I guess it's also important to say, much as you might find a zealous love for UNIX inside many (computer) engineering-led organizations, similar loyalty to Windows exists in many more (locally under-represented) industries for reasons that are less likely to be understood around here.

mschuster91 6y ago
> and I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work that might have grown out of a once Windows-only desktop software cottage industry Much render farm/graphics work was once Mac territory but given Apple's ridiculous pricing and lack of server options besides stacked Mac Minis or support for NVidia stuff many have shifted away. Truly sad...
icelancer 6y ago
Yeah it's huge. My industry is 95% .NET. Lot of [LARGECO] use Outlook, which means the entire Office stack is dragged into use, which makes LDAP the logical choice, and Windows management of it, and then the rest of the tooling because why not...
tpush 6y ago
It bears repeating the the majority of software development happens on Windows (and I say that as a Mac guy).
dkarl 6y ago
In the mid 2000s I was working on scientific computing software running on RHEL workstations for a huge oil company. One day our customer inside this huge oil corp told us the entire worldwide company was standardizing on Windows for desktops and workstations. He said not to worry right away, because it would take them years to rip his team's lab full of Linux workstations out of his hands. I'm sure that was a massive, traumatic, and expensive transition that they would not repeat while the institutional memory of it remained, so I imagine they're still on Windows today.
- tracker1 6y ago
  That's rough... Unfortunately Windows authentication and access mgt software rules the world... I remember a lot of issues in a few environments with macOS over the years. At least with wsl2 I get the Linux goodness and decent docker support finally, hopefully it can roll out of insiders in into GA soon so everyone can get their hands on it.
voltagex_ 6y ago
Yep, definitely - I've been working in Windows/ASP.NET for 10 years. More on the sysadmin side of things now, but it's still big enough to have a career.
tracker1 6y ago
I'm glad that the next ".Net Core" will be ".Net 5" and hopefully once people start upgrading (those who resisted "Core" will finally come over), should see Linux as a target option more readily. Of course commercial libraries and dragging them by the teeth will take longer. Most of what I've written in the past 5+ years either targets or runs in linux/docker. It's been a challenge pulling the teams up to spead.
- RyanGoosling 6y ago
  Was the challenge of pulling the teams up to speed efficient? Was it worth all the communication overhead and training for the benefits Linux has over Windows? What are those benefits anyways?
  - tracker1 6y ago
    For the most part, nobody really cares or notices... our CI/CD and test environments run Linux/Docker but for the most part, the devs don't notice... it's still a lot of SQL and the UI is React+Redux+Material-UI. I still get the occasional question when something breaks. That said, it would be nice if more understood some of the underlying stuff... I've had to champion a lot of the changes myself.
mroche 6y ago
> I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work Eh... outside of the broadcast motion graphics group, small personal/business farms, or educational institutions this is largely a majority Linux area.* *I'm speaking from the perspective of public cloud farms and the feature film industry (for VFX and Anim). You can't escape Windows for select software and plugins, but if it's not a strict requirement by the software, then it's a business choice for other reasons (i.e. existing environment, staff, etc) because you will from a technical standpoint operate at a loss using Windows.
- dmw_ng 6y ago
  It's the same as infrastructure and server side.. from my corner I see a limited horizon over which little exists and only a few things over there might use Windows. Think of any industry: the first for whatever reason that came to mind was architecture. Lots of firms on ArchiCAD and that'll never change, there's no reason to. The value is not the tool or the platform underlying it, or anything else an Engineer(tm) will understand, the value is all in the buildings costing 1000x more than the 'tiny windows utility' that just happens to contribute to the result, kinda like QuickBooks or calc.exe. It's a bunch of actual people designing buildings that cost so much more than a Windows license doing Real Things that have some lingua franca interface that has no reason to go Linux and probably never will, because in that business they're too busy with actual priorities to ever even discuss how the status quo could change. There are 10,000 industries like this, and probably 10,000 people to each of those who simply don't care, because to them the computer is and will remain only a tool. That's the world of Windows we can't see.
  - RyanGoosling 6y ago
    Yes. I know Windows inside and out. I can easily navigate the UI. It does the job I need it to. I don’t want to spend my time inefficiently by toiling around in a Linux console due to some strange affinity towards Linux. I have a job to do and Windows is an effective tool I know and can use to execute the job.
    - 6y ago
StillBored 6y ago
I think its a SMB thing. Basically windows owns organizations with less than 10-30 people. And there are a _LOT_ of those, and they do a _LOT_ of custom development for their little specialization. Its the excel sheets that grow into full blown applications, or the vm.net one off utilities someone hacked together that grow into the backbone of a thriving small business. Even the generic catagory SMBs (dentists, car repair, etc) end up mostly being windows shops because the owner gets quickbooks or whatever and runs the whole thing from a windows pc in the office.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  No way around using windows as a private medical practice. Too much bespoke software.
  - genocidicbunny 6y ago
    Yep. I don't think I've ever seen a computer at any of the healthcare services I've used that wasn't either ancient and running some really old bespoke software, or wasn't some flavour of Windows running slightly less old bespoke software.
- sk5t 6y ago
  I entirely disagree with the notion that Windows is strongest in SMB. Active Directory + GPO + various third-party device management stuff, plus the depth of Office-related integrations, and Microsoft's absolutely massive track record for supporting all kinds of uses, put Windows way ahead for large-scale compliance and auditing. On the side of deploying and managing workstations, I would take Windows every single time over MacOS or Linux. For real, some combination of Apple Business Manager and JAMF is supposed to go head-to-head against AD+GPO? On Linux--Centrify, or something from Red Hat, that might well be more costly than Windows licenses (guessing here)?
yndoendo 6y ago
I see it's size relative to locked-in technology from the past or what individuals already know. Currently, a WPF developer, since that was the technology chosen by the previous developer, and cannot stand working with Windows 10. People praise Visual Studios but under heavy development, crash often. It is not designed for coding/typing. Visual Studio Code is better at that and has only been around a short amount of time. .NET / C# is useful but frameworks like Entity are layered bloat where standard SQL is so much faster and cleaner to utilize. Moving from Entity to standard SQL reduced start-up time by 10 seconds in one application. All the benefits the Entity has is only if the provider for your DB back-end has those ability coded with-in it. I actually miss being an embedded and full-stack developer writing C, C++, go, typescript, JavaScript ... Even writing cross-platform QT5 applications in Linux and only using Mac or Windows to build and package the binaries is more pleasant. A big part is that Linux / BSD is focused around development where Windows is a second had citizen. From the register which prevents simple backing up and restoring configuration settings fro application settings versus a config.ini file or such, which can be stored in git. Or the directory System32 = 64 bit DLLs versus SysWow64 = 32 bit DLLs. Inability to use very useful commands such as rsync and lsof or even piping through SSH. Or forced to keep useless applications around/running/installed such as XBOX or Cortana. Example: `echo -e "#include <stdio.h>\nint main() { printf(\"Hello, world\"); return 0;}" > hello.c && gcc hello.c && ./a.out` Even the desktop environment in Windows lacks usefulness and takes more steps then ones in Linux. Windows keeps on adding bloat to each new version. Why do I need to have the ability to run 16bit applications around if I'm never going to run 16bit applications? These are some of the reasons I only deploy Linux VMs on Azure. Lean and only retains what you need with simple backup means and deployment.

by dmw_ng 6y ago

mschuster91 6y ago

> and I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work that might have grown out of a once Windows-only desktop software cottage industry Much render farm/graphics work was once Mac territory but given Apple's ridiculous pricing and lack of server options besides stacked Mac Minis or support for NVidia stuff many have shifted away. Truly sad...

icelancer 6y ago

Yeah it's huge. My industry is 95% .NET. Lot of [LARGECO] use Outlook, which means the entire Office stack is dragged into use, which makes LDAP the logical choice, and Windows management of it, and then the rest of the tooling because why not...

tpush 6y ago

It bears repeating the the majority of software development happens on Windows (and I say that as a Mac guy).

dkarl 6y ago

In the mid 2000s I was working on scientific computing software running on RHEL workstations for a huge oil company. One day our customer inside this huge oil corp told us the entire worldwide company was standardizing on Windows for desktops and workstations. He said not to worry right away, because it would take them years to rip his team's lab full of Linux workstations out of his hands. I'm sure that was a massive, traumatic, and expensive transition that they would not repeat while the institutional memory of it remained, so I imagine they're still on Windows today.

tracker1 6y ago
That's rough... Unfortunately Windows authentication and access mgt software rules the world... I remember a lot of issues in a few environments with macOS over the years. At least with wsl2 I get the Linux goodness and decent docker support finally, hopefully it can roll out of insiders in into GA soon so everyone can get their hands on it.

voltagex_ 6y ago

Yep, definitely - I've been working in Windows/ASP.NET for 10 years. More on the sysadmin side of things now, but it's still big enough to have a career.

tracker1 6y ago

I'm glad that the next ".Net Core" will be ".Net 5" and hopefully once people start upgrading (those who resisted "Core" will finally come over), should see Linux as a target option more readily. Of course commercial libraries and dragging them by the teeth will take longer. Most of what I've written in the past 5+ years either targets or runs in linux/docker. It's been a challenge pulling the teams up to spead.

RyanGoosling 6y ago
Was the challenge of pulling the teams up to speed efficient? Was it worth all the communication overhead and training for the benefits Linux has over Windows? What are those benefits anyways?
- tracker1 6y ago
  For the most part, nobody really cares or notices... our CI/CD and test environments run Linux/Docker but for the most part, the devs don't notice... it's still a lot of SQL and the UI is React+Redux+Material-UI. I still get the occasional question when something breaks. That said, it would be nice if more understood some of the underlying stuff... I've had to champion a lot of the changes myself.

mroche 6y ago

> I imagine things like render farms or other specialist graphics work Eh... outside of the broadcast motion graphics group, small personal/business farms, or educational institutions this is largely a majority Linux area.* *I'm speaking from the perspective of public cloud farms and the feature film industry (for VFX and Anim). You can't escape Windows for select software and plugins, but if it's not a strict requirement by the software, then it's a business choice for other reasons (i.e. existing environment, staff, etc) because you will from a technical standpoint operate at a loss using Windows.

dmw_ng 6y ago
It's the same as infrastructure and server side.. from my corner I see a limited horizon over which little exists and only a few things over there might use Windows. Think of any industry: the first for whatever reason that came to mind was architecture. Lots of firms on ArchiCAD and that'll never change, there's no reason to. The value is not the tool or the platform underlying it, or anything else an Engineer(tm) will understand, the value is all in the buildings costing 1000x more than the 'tiny windows utility' that just happens to contribute to the result, kinda like QuickBooks or calc.exe. It's a bunch of actual people designing buildings that cost so much more than a Windows license doing Real Things that have some lingua franca interface that has no reason to go Linux and probably never will, because in that business they're too busy with actual priorities to ever even discuss how the status quo could change. There are 10,000 industries like this, and probably 10,000 people to each of those who simply don't care, because to them the computer is and will remain only a tool. That's the world of Windows we can't see.
- RyanGoosling 6y ago
  Yes. I know Windows inside and out. I can easily navigate the UI. It does the job I need it to. I don’t want to spend my time inefficiently by toiling around in a Linux console due to some strange affinity towards Linux. I have a job to do and Windows is an effective tool I know and can use to execute the job.
  - 6y ago

StillBored 6y ago

I think its a SMB thing. Basically windows owns organizations with less than 10-30 people. And there are a _LOT_ of those, and they do a _LOT_ of custom development for their little specialization. Its the excel sheets that grow into full blown applications, or the vm.net one off utilities someone hacked together that grow into the backbone of a thriving small business. Even the generic catagory SMBs (dentists, car repair, etc) end up mostly being windows shops because the owner gets quickbooks or whatever and runs the whole thing from a windows pc in the office.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
No way around using windows as a private medical practice. Too much bespoke software.
- genocidicbunny 6y ago
  Yep. I don't think I've ever seen a computer at any of the healthcare services I've used that wasn't either ancient and running some really old bespoke software, or wasn't some flavour of Windows running slightly less old bespoke software.
sk5t 6y ago
I entirely disagree with the notion that Windows is strongest in SMB. Active Directory + GPO + various third-party device management stuff, plus the depth of Office-related integrations, and Microsoft's absolutely massive track record for supporting all kinds of uses, put Windows way ahead for large-scale compliance and auditing. On the side of deploying and managing workstations, I would take Windows every single time over MacOS or Linux. For real, some combination of Apple Business Manager and JAMF is supposed to go head-to-head against AD+GPO? On Linux--Centrify, or something from Red Hat, that might well be more costly than Windows licenses (guessing here)?

yndoendo 6y ago

I see it's size relative to locked-in technology from the past or what individuals already know. Currently, a WPF developer, since that was the technology chosen by the previous developer, and cannot stand working with Windows 10. People praise Visual Studios but under heavy development, crash often. It is not designed for coding/typing. Visual Studio Code is better at that and has only been around a short amount of time. .NET / C# is useful but frameworks like Entity are layered bloat where standard SQL is so much faster and cleaner to utilize. Moving from Entity to standard SQL reduced start-up time by 10 seconds in one application. All the benefits the Entity has is only if the provider for your DB back-end has those ability coded with-in it. I actually miss being an embedded and full-stack developer writing C, C++, go, typescript, JavaScript ... Even writing cross-platform QT5 applications in Linux and only using Mac or Windows to build and package the binaries is more pleasant. A big part is that Linux / BSD is focused around development where Windows is a second had citizen. From the register which prevents simple backing up and restoring configuration settings fro application settings versus a config.ini file or such, which can be stored in git. Or the directory System32 = 64 bit DLLs versus SysWow64 = 32 bit DLLs. Inability to use very useful commands such as rsync and lsof or even piping through SSH. Or forced to keep useless applications around/running/installed such as XBOX or Cortana. Example: `echo -e "#include <stdio.h>\nint main() { printf(\"Hello, world\"); return 0;}" > hello.c && gcc hello.c && ./a.out` Even the desktop environment in Windows lacks usefulness and takes more steps then ones in Linux. Windows keeps on adding bloat to each new version. Why do I need to have the ability to run 16bit applications around if I'm never going to run 16bit applications? These are some of the reasons I only deploy Linux VMs on Azure. Lean and only retains what you need with simple backup means and deployment.