7 ms·

Based on this anecdote, it sounds like the team had little or no .net experience and your seniors probably don't deserve the title.

javcasas 5y ago
Curiously, I haven't had these problems in Python/cherrypy/django/flask, Haskell/snap/yesod, NodeJS/express/nextjs, so, maybe it's something beyond lack of .net experience.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Your experience mirrors mine, both early (circa 2005) and more recently. Footguns are common. I am not sure where the .NET community coalesces (python and similar tend to hit up IRC).
  - topkai22 5y ago
    The ability to find and get answers on stack overflow is pretty impressive, although that might not be the “community” your looking for. I’ve had decent direct engagements with them framework dev tends on GitHub before as well.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      To add on to community -- it's more than that as well, it's the zeitgeist. In the scientific computing world, if something has hit NumFocus' portfolio then it's active, maintained, accessible, and (IMO) can consider adding into a tech stack. Similar for Apache for general FLOSS projects. I don't understand the dotnet's extension ecosystem -- how to find quality sourcing, etc. Going from an established project into dotnet SDK makes sense. But searching GitHub for useful dotnet frameworks -- stars are probably misleading here?
- koide 5y ago
  There's been lots of bad decisions along the way for .net, but In its current state (.net Core 6) I can't really see any of your problems happening. Although what strikes me most is your first point. Running SQL server on 1gb and complaining that it didn't work well isn't really wise. Maybe this happened on the early years of .net Core or even on FF?
  - javcasas 5y ago
    I'm following what says at the official Microsoft documentation. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hardware-and-software-requirements-for-installing-sql-server-ver15?view=sql-server-ver15 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hard... Am I unwise for following the official Microsoft documentation for a Microsoft product? Yes, I'm unwise for following it. I shouldn't have accepted the project because it required Microsoft technology. That would be wise.
    - kingmotley 5y ago
      The documentation you linked to clearly states that they recommend 4GB of memory and more for larger databases. While it CAN run on 1GB of memory, it is also therefore NOT recommended. You chose to go the route of the unrecommended. Also, just sounds like you hate Microsoft, and are looking for (poor) excuses to continue your hatred.
      - javcasas 5y ago
        We were using the Express edition, and I don't think a database needs 4GB of RAM for serving 600MB of data in a glorified CRUD and filter application that receives 1 update every 2 seconds, and serves a bunch of queries every 5 minutes. An unoptimized Sqlite can do that easily without the crazy memory.
        kingmotley 5y ago
        That makes more sense, sorry for the confusion. I don't think your expectation is unrealistic. I haven't run into anything like what you experienced, but my exposure to express under tight memory constraints isn't something I dabble in.
- thawaya3113 5y ago
  In my experience the biggest problem with C#/.NET tooling is the lack of too many open source 3rd party alternatives. In the .Net world, if MS released a certain library, that would become the de facto choice for nearly everyone in the ecosystem. Competing with the MS options was almost impossible. So even if the MS choice had a lot of flaws, it would remain predominant. Which meant that as long as the MS option was good enough, you wouldn’t see too many alternatives unless they were an order of magnitude better. And a large reason for this was the closed source nature of .NET. In the open source world, even if the primary vendor option is great, but it has only a single minor issue, someone will invariably fork it and fix the minor issue. Which puts competitive pressure on the primary vendor to incorporate that fox, or if they’re unable to, see a lot of people migrate to the competing, slightly better offering, which is easy to do since it’s basically the same product with that 1 slightly better fix. In practice the original vendor almost certainly incorporates the Fox, especially since it’s so easy to do as someone else has already written the code for it. So IMO the problem with the .NET/C# ecosystem used to be it’s closed source nature, which led to very little competitive pressure for improving tools and libraries, unlike all the primarily open source alternatives you mention.
  - brtkdotse 5y ago
    > In the .Net world, if MS released a certain library, that would become the de facto choice for nearly everyone in the ecosystem. Competing with the MS options was almost impossible. While I get your point, I personally prefer it this way. Whatever Microsoft will put out will at least be “ok”, regularly bug fixed and supported for ever and ever. I prefer to having an ok default and just rolling with it.
    - DeathArrow 5y ago
      And having a default library for everything is great since you don't have to learn countless libraries doing the same thing and you can understand code written by others with ease. But this is a tacit agreement in the .NET world. It's not only about libraries written by Microsoft. When sensible libraries such as Automapper or Newtonsoft JSON appear, everybody defaults to them.

javcasas 5y ago

Curiously, I haven't had these problems in Python/cherrypy/django/flask, Haskell/snap/yesod, NodeJS/express/nextjs, so, maybe it's something beyond lack of .net experience.

tomrod 5y ago
Your experience mirrors mine, both early (circa 2005) and more recently. Footguns are common. I am not sure where the .NET community coalesces (python and similar tend to hit up IRC).
- topkai22 5y ago
  The ability to find and get answers on stack overflow is pretty impressive, although that might not be the “community” your looking for. I’ve had decent direct engagements with them framework dev tends on GitHub before as well.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    To add on to community -- it's more than that as well, it's the zeitgeist. In the scientific computing world, if something has hit NumFocus' portfolio then it's active, maintained, accessible, and (IMO) can consider adding into a tech stack. Similar for Apache for general FLOSS projects. I don't understand the dotnet's extension ecosystem -- how to find quality sourcing, etc. Going from an established project into dotnet SDK makes sense. But searching GitHub for useful dotnet frameworks -- stars are probably misleading here?
koide 5y ago
There's been lots of bad decisions along the way for .net, but In its current state (.net Core 6) I can't really see any of your problems happening. Although what strikes me most is your first point. Running SQL server on 1gb and complaining that it didn't work well isn't really wise. Maybe this happened on the early years of .net Core or even on FF?
- javcasas 5y ago
  I'm following what says at the official Microsoft documentation. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hardware-and-software-requirements-for-installing-sql-server-ver15?view=sql-server-ver15 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hard... Am I unwise for following the official Microsoft documentation for a Microsoft product? Yes, I'm unwise for following it. I shouldn't have accepted the project because it required Microsoft technology. That would be wise.
  - kingmotley 5y ago
    The documentation you linked to clearly states that they recommend 4GB of memory and more for larger databases. While it CAN run on 1GB of memory, it is also therefore NOT recommended. You chose to go the route of the unrecommended. Also, just sounds like you hate Microsoft, and are looking for (poor) excuses to continue your hatred.
    - javcasas 5y ago
      We were using the Express edition, and I don't think a database needs 4GB of RAM for serving 600MB of data in a glorified CRUD and filter application that receives 1 update every 2 seconds, and serves a bunch of queries every 5 minutes. An unoptimized Sqlite can do that easily without the crazy memory.
      - kingmotley 5y ago
        That makes more sense, sorry for the confusion. I don't think your expectation is unrealistic. I haven't run into anything like what you experienced, but my exposure to express under tight memory constraints isn't something I dabble in.
thawaya3113 5y ago
In my experience the biggest problem with C#/.NET tooling is the lack of too many open source 3rd party alternatives. In the .Net world, if MS released a certain library, that would become the de facto choice for nearly everyone in the ecosystem. Competing with the MS options was almost impossible. So even if the MS choice had a lot of flaws, it would remain predominant. Which meant that as long as the MS option was good enough, you wouldn’t see too many alternatives unless they were an order of magnitude better. And a large reason for this was the closed source nature of .NET. In the open source world, even if the primary vendor option is great, but it has only a single minor issue, someone will invariably fork it and fix the minor issue. Which puts competitive pressure on the primary vendor to incorporate that fox, or if they’re unable to, see a lot of people migrate to the competing, slightly better offering, which is easy to do since it’s basically the same product with that 1 slightly better fix. In practice the original vendor almost certainly incorporates the Fox, especially since it’s so easy to do as someone else has already written the code for it. So IMO the problem with the .NET/C# ecosystem used to be it’s closed source nature, which led to very little competitive pressure for improving tools and libraries, unlike all the primarily open source alternatives you mention.
- brtkdotse 5y ago
  > In the .Net world, if MS released a certain library, that would become the de facto choice for nearly everyone in the ecosystem. Competing with the MS options was almost impossible. While I get your point, I personally prefer it this way. Whatever Microsoft will put out will at least be “ok”, regularly bug fixed and supported for ever and ever. I prefer to having an ok default and just rolling with it.
  - DeathArrow 5y ago
    And having a default library for everything is great since you don't have to learn countless libraries doing the same thing and you can understand code written by others with ease. But this is a tacit agreement in the .NET world. It's not only about libraries written by Microsoft. When sensible libraries such as Automapper or Newtonsoft JSON appear, everybody defaults to them.