4 ms·

Appreciating the power of a true community (Ruby and.NET)

11 points by colin_jack 15y ago

djacobs 15y ago
MS don’t deserve .NET developers who want to get better, because MS aims at developers who don’t want to get better. just developers who want to stay where they are and have a job until they die. Coming from the Ruby community, this is a little surprising. I know everyone rags on Microsoft for being the man, but certainly they aim for more than the status quo, no?
- colin_jack 15y ago
  I'm a .NET dev now looking at Ruby etc and honestly no I don't think MS do try to move beyond the status quo, or more correctly I guess Roy hit the nail on the head in that the advancement is often of the "new sharepoint 2013" variety rather than advancing practices or really useful functionality. Some will argue things are more advanced now (ALT.NET, OSS, packagement in NuGet/OpenWrap) but I think Roy hits the nail on the head in terms of the speed of change in say Ruby/node.js communities as compared to .NET.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mendicant 15y ago
  They don't. I've been watching intently as a .net dev for the last few years and MS doesn't play a leadership game of any sort. They aim for the lowest common demoninator and their framework development is "me too" development. They wait and see what is popular and after it has shown it's worth, they spend the next few years catching up to the community. Except they always add their own MS flavor to pollute it. Case in point: the enum designer for Entity Framework. And the worst part? People eat that stuff up. There is and has been .Net communities outside of Microsoft but it is terribly difficult and frustrating to try and turn the tide. Most of the communities wither up and die as they discover the power of other communities they are trying to emulate. It ends up being easier to switch (or do both) than to turn the tide. Frankly, I don't blame them. I've given up trying for change. My influence isn't large enough. I'll likely move on at my first opportunity. I still like c# an will keep it in my toolbox. I just feel like it's starting to be a burden more than a boon for learning. Not that there isn't opportunity, there's just more elsewhere. And I have more fun when learning. I wish it wasn't the way it was but I have a feeling it's not going to improve. For another 3 or 4 years.... At which point they'll have caught up to where everyone else is now.
GFischer 15y ago
I was expecting a rant, but it's an interesting perspective (though still a bit of a rant at the end). I'm still pretty much stuck in .NET, though whenever I do have to get outside my comfort zone (which is often), I gain a new appreciation for the IDE, but I have to agree that the Ruby community does sound interesting, and has a lot of nice tools. I'm still not convinced that I could do my job better on Ruby (enterprise software, non-web based), but I'll definitely give it a try for web development (as soon as I finish my MBA - I decided to follow the dark path of more money)
jinushaun 15y ago
Matches my sentiments exactly, although I wouldn't completely blame MS. I blame the .NET community. Sure, MS is a business in it to make money. They release a new version of .NET as much to drive sales of Visual Studio as they do to improve the language and development process; but why doesn't the .NET community just take it and run with it? Why doesn't the community have a .NET version of gems or Rails or MVC? Why is everyone waiting on MS to deliver the "official" version of a particular technology?
- Michiel 15y ago
  What is 'the community' and what do you expect from them? Looking at some recent technologies/libraries/tools released by Microsoft, there are alternatives to all of them, and most of them were released well before Microsoft released theirs: NHibernate vs. Entity Framework Monorail vs ASP.NET MVC NUnit (and many others) vs Microsoft Test Autofac (and many others) vs MEF Spark (and many others) vs Razor OpenWrap vs NuGet Umbraco CMS vs Orchard CMS It's just that 80% (90%? 95%?) of .NET developers associate working on .NET with working in Visual Studio. And whenever Microsoft comes out with their version, there's always a 'tooling story'. LINQ to SQL is a great example: a limited technology with great tooling and documentation, just right amount of integration to get a lot of developers on board. Same with ASP.NET MVC, every official video will show how easy it is too add any of the M, V or C parts using Visual Studio. Ultimately the tools shouldn't matter that much, but in 'the .NET community' it matters a lot. In fact, I would say 70% of Microsoft strategy is 'get them hooked on the tools' and the other 30% is to always have something new coming up. I'm fine with that, I use ASP.NET MVC, NuGet, Entity Framework, and I mix 'n match with some of the great OSS libraries (like xUnit or Autofac). I'm comfortable with that (even when using WebForms) and I make a good living. And when I want to debug, I hit F5 and live is good. Don't forget that Codeplex is a pretty good move from Microsoft to make sure there is a healthy amount of OSS solutions available in the .NET space If this is what works for many developers, for venders and customers and for Microsoft, and the 'ecosystem' is thriving, AND there is STILL room for OSS... then I don't see a problem. There is no greater good... if this does NOT work for you, if this makes you unhappy, there are so many alternatives outside .NET. It doesn't mean that the .NET ecosystem should change. In fact, I don't think it ever will. The model works too good for Microsoft to just 'hand over the keys' to the community. Microsoft owns the platform, this is their strategy and it works.

11 points by colin_jack 15y ago

MS don’t deserve .NET developers who want to get better, because MS aims at developers who don’t want to get better. just developers who want to stay where they are and have a job until they die. Coming from the Ruby community, this is a little surprising. I know everyone rags on Microsoft for being the man, but certainly they aim for more than the status quo, no?

colin_jack 15y ago
I'm a .NET dev now looking at Ruby etc and honestly no I don't think MS do try to move beyond the status quo, or more correctly I guess Roy hit the nail on the head in that the advancement is often of the "new sharepoint 2013" variety rather than advancing practices or really useful functionality. Some will argue things are more advanced now (ALT.NET, OSS, packagement in NuGet/OpenWrap) but I think Roy hits the nail on the head in terms of the speed of change in say Ruby/node.js communities as compared to .NET.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mendicant 15y ago
They don't. I've been watching intently as a .net dev for the last few years and MS doesn't play a leadership game of any sort. They aim for the lowest common demoninator and their framework development is "me too" development. They wait and see what is popular and after it has shown it's worth, they spend the next few years catching up to the community. Except they always add their own MS flavor to pollute it. Case in point: the enum designer for Entity Framework. And the worst part? People eat that stuff up. There is and has been .Net communities outside of Microsoft but it is terribly difficult and frustrating to try and turn the tide. Most of the communities wither up and die as they discover the power of other communities they are trying to emulate. It ends up being easier to switch (or do both) than to turn the tide. Frankly, I don't blame them. I've given up trying for change. My influence isn't large enough. I'll likely move on at my first opportunity. I still like c# an will keep it in my toolbox. I just feel like it's starting to be a burden more than a boon for learning. Not that there isn't opportunity, there's just more elsewhere. And I have more fun when learning. I wish it wasn't the way it was but I have a feeling it's not going to improve. For another 3 or 4 years.... At which point they'll have caught up to where everyone else is now.

GFischer 15y ago

I was expecting a rant, but it's an interesting perspective (though still a bit of a rant at the end). I'm still pretty much stuck in .NET, though whenever I do have to get outside my comfort zone (which is often), I gain a new appreciation for the IDE, but I have to agree that the Ruby community does sound interesting, and has a lot of nice tools. I'm still not convinced that I could do my job better on Ruby (enterprise software, non-web based), but I'll definitely give it a try for web development (as soon as I finish my MBA - I decided to follow the dark path of more money)

jinushaun 15y ago

Matches my sentiments exactly, although I wouldn't completely blame MS. I blame the .NET community. Sure, MS is a business in it to make money. They release a new version of .NET as much to drive sales of Visual Studio as they do to improve the language and development process; but why doesn't the .NET community just take it and run with it? Why doesn't the community have a .NET version of gems or Rails or MVC? Why is everyone waiting on MS to deliver the "official" version of a particular technology?

Michiel 15y ago
What is 'the community' and what do you expect from them? Looking at some recent technologies/libraries/tools released by Microsoft, there are alternatives to all of them, and most of them were released well before Microsoft released theirs: NHibernate vs. Entity Framework Monorail vs ASP.NET MVC NUnit (and many others) vs Microsoft Test Autofac (and many others) vs MEF Spark (and many others) vs Razor OpenWrap vs NuGet Umbraco CMS vs Orchard CMS It's just that 80% (90%? 95%?) of .NET developers associate working on .NET with working in Visual Studio. And whenever Microsoft comes out with their version, there's always a 'tooling story'. LINQ to SQL is a great example: a limited technology with great tooling and documentation, just right amount of integration to get a lot of developers on board. Same with ASP.NET MVC, every official video will show how easy it is too add any of the M, V or C parts using Visual Studio. Ultimately the tools shouldn't matter that much, but in 'the .NET community' it matters a lot. In fact, I would say 70% of Microsoft strategy is 'get them hooked on the tools' and the other 30% is to always have something new coming up. I'm fine with that, I use ASP.NET MVC, NuGet, Entity Framework, and I mix 'n match with some of the great OSS libraries (like xUnit or Autofac). I'm comfortable with that (even when using WebForms) and I make a good living. And when I want to debug, I hit F5 and live is good. Don't forget that Codeplex is a pretty good move from Microsoft to make sure there is a healthy amount of OSS solutions available in the .NET space If this is what works for many developers, for venders and customers and for Microsoft, and the 'ecosystem' is thriving, AND there is STILL room for OSS... then I don't see a problem. There is no greater good... if this does NOT work for you, if this makes you unhappy, there are so many alternatives outside .NET. It doesn't mean that the .NET ecosystem should change. In fact, I don't think it ever will. The model works too good for Microsoft to just 'hand over the keys' to the community. Microsoft owns the platform, this is their strategy and it works.