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Why was .NET called .NET?
- jacktoole1 15y agoI keep a list of my favorite (vaguely) CS-related quotes. At some point I stumbled upon this: "I think Microsoft named .NET so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing." (It was attributed to "Oktal", and I believe it was from the StackOverflow page linked by the article, which no longer exists.)
- bashzor 15y agoI was about to post the same quote :)
- 0x0 15y agoI'm imagining a bunch of suits getting together deciding "Time to start working on the next generation of COM... COM2!". And then the first developer gets ready to write some code, and goes "Explorer->Right click->New folder->COM2". After a few attempts and some head scratching: "Uhh.. I think we need another name"
- chris_wot 15y agoThat's interesting. But try creating a folder called .NET in Windows explorer... :-) Hint - you can't!
- 0x0 15y agoNice! So when they couldn't use a reserved folder name, they went for the next best thing ;)
- steverb 15y agoSure you can. Create a folder. Rename it to ".Net.". The dot at the end of the folder name is important.
- chris_wot 15y agoInteresting. But they didn't call it dot-net-dot :-)
- Dylan16807 15y agoExplorer silently strips the trailing dot and is tricked into doing the right thing.
- mkopinsky 15y agoThis becomes quite annoying when I try to create a .htaccess file. (Command line rename is the only solution I've found.)
- rbanffy 15y agoCygwin. Don't use the Windows command line. Just don't. And while you are at it, use PuTTY-based Minterm instead of the Windows console.
- mkopinsky 15y agoCan you explain why? I use cygwin when I need GNU-like tools (sed, grep, etc.) but for something like renaming a file I don't see the point of using a slower terminal that requires more typing ( cd /cygdrive/c/Doc<tab><wait>/mkop<tab><wait>/Desktop/bla vs cd \Doc<tab>mkop<tab>Des<tab>bla ) just so I can type "mv" instead of "rename". I've never used minterm. What does it do better?
- tom9729 15y agoUse MSYS (part of MinGW) and Console2 (set bash as shell). cd /c/Doc<tab>/mkop<tab>/Desktop/bla
- mkopinsky 15y agoThis doesn't answer my main question, which is WHY? What do these tools do better (enough to matter)?
- tom9729 15y agoI prefer the Unix command line everywhere. MSYS gives you a Unix shell, and all the Unix tools, built right on top of win32. I haven't used it in years, but I understand Cygwin is quite a bit heavier. The cmd.exe terminal is atrocious. Even if you don't want to use Bash, Console2 gives you things like tabs, and you can resize the window normally. tldr; It's not slower, it doesn't involve more typing, it gives you a sane Unix command-line experience on Windows.
- quink 15y agoThey should have just incremented the last letter of COM to create the new version CON. Explorer->Right click->New folder->CON... Oh.
- cek 15y agoYou have a good imagination. I worked on COM at Microsoft. We had a project to add managed run-time capabilities to COM. This was ~'96. Internally we thought of the Component Object Model that shipped as part of OLE as "COM version 1". The version that supported distributed capabilities (aka DCOM) as "COM version 2". When we started working on adding managed runtime support we started talking about "COM 3". But that talk stopped quickly when I tried to create a directory named COM3 for some specs. Creating the directory wasn't a problem. But putting anything in it or deleting was. We quickly settled on the name "COR" for Component Object Runtime instead. We actually released the COR at the '96 (I think) PDC as an alpha. But it never actually shipped because .NET won the internal battle (full IL based managed runtime to replace COM vs. incrementally adding garbage collection and other managed capabilites to COM ala Objective-C). Later on, as the MS Transaction Server group was merged with the COM team, the name COM+ was invented to cover "DCOM + Transaction Server + MSMQ". This led to the fabled Project42 which I have chosen to forget.
- 0x0 15y agoWow, haha, thanks for sharing that. My old suspicions finally confirmed! :)
- acqq 15y agoI remember reading articles about COM+ which didn't mean MSMQ but looked more like something close to what .net framework became. Then I've read that Msmq and thought "what?" Wasn't then COR the first mentioning of what you name COR?
- rmason 15y agoCan't help you on why it's called .Net but it came very close to being called Microsoft ColdFusion http://www.sargeway.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=6DB4A0CE-C29F-05EC-85F8D2889411C818 http://www.sargeway.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=6D...
- daeken 15y agoWhile interesting, you're conflating .NET with ASP. One is a broad stack for application dev, another is an unrelated technology for web dev.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- leelin 15y agoI was Summer intern at Microsoft in 2001 and back then the interns went to Bill Gates's house for a bbq near the end of the Summer. One of the interns asked "what other names did you think of before coming up with .NET?" To the best of my memory, Bill's answer was something like: I didn't actually like the name .NET. It makes people wonder if we are finally just starting to learn about the Internet. Sadly, the other proposed name was even worse. Our mission statement at the time was 'work Anywhere, Anytime, on Any device,' so the proposal was AAAWare.
- damian2000 15y agoSounds almost as bad as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderware ;-)
- rubyrescue 15y agoi worked on .net before it was .net. we didn't have a name for the runtime, we (a very large we) just forked the J++ compiler and started hacking, calling the J++ language "COOL", for Common Object Oriented Language. For a long time the runtime was only usable by building executable files with the "jvc" compiler but compiled C#. We started a VB fork that compiled to the "clr". Yet still no name. At the end of the day it was purely a marketing decision.
- ConstantineXVI 15y agoCurious, was the CLR also built off of the Microsoft JVM? And is any of the original code for either still rattling around inside modern .NET?
- rubyrescue 15y agototally separate people who had never worked on the jvm for legal reasons
- jroseattle 15y agoYep, I remember COOL as well. And yes, marketing strikes again. :-(
- pygy_ 15y agoWaaayback link to the deleted Stack Overflow Q&A referenced in the article. 2010/08 http://web.archive.org/web/20100812155534/http://stackoverflow.com/questions/628145/why-was-net-called-net http://web.archive.org/web/20100812155534/http://stackoverfl...
- grandpoobah 15y agoThey were going to call it WinFX if I recall correctly
- damian2000 15y agoYeah I remember WinFX as well, but I think that was around 2005 - it was the codename for the set of .NET 3.0 technologies later known as WPF, WCF and WF ... there's something here about it - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianm/archive/2006/04/19/578851.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianm/archive/2006/04/19/578851.aspx
- thought_alarm 15y ago"Microsoft .NET, Microsoft's XML-based Web services platform, comprises four major pillars: 1) the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio® .NET suite of developer tools; 2) the .NET Enterprise Servers, which provide a robust infrastructure for Web services; 3) .NET devices and experiences; and 4) .NET services." From a 2001 press release announcing "Hailstorm". http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2001/Mar01/03-19HailstormPR.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2001/Mar01/03-19Ha...
- damian2000 15y agointeresting link - had to laugh at this bit ... > "HailStorm" -based solutions allow users to manage and protect their personal information, as opposed to today's world in which it is scattered across the technology landscape, with no ability to control the privacy of their information. If anything, things are worse now than they were back then.
- ecaradec 15y ago"The question was deemed to be offtopic for StackOverflow," I've stopped using stackoverflow as a contributor, the moderators are really overzealous. Legit questions are killed way too easily, without any real recourse to explain or rephrase. Meta doesn't help because the same people are moderating both, and quickly end discussion there too. It's really sad because the platform is great.
- ComputerGuru 15y agoI have no problem with SO mods closing topics (the quality of new posts has really gone down as SO gains popularity), but I do have a huge problem with them permanently deleting closed topics after some time. Some of the most popular posts on SO with thousands of hits a day linked to from all over the web have been permanently removed with no official archived location. They're throwing away years and years of community posts and comments, with some very valuable info and data in there. It's really sad.
- gbog 15y agoI don't know. I think one of their biggest problem is to handle "gravity": how good content flows and bad content sink. Wikipedia handle this better. They, at SO, have to have some gravity.
- hugh4life 15y agoThe biggest thing I loath about SO is when they close threads because the question has been asked before and then link to a thread that nobody has replied to 3+ years. SO is becoming less and less useful as time goes on because they actually stop questions that need to be re-answered from being re-answered.
- bztzt 15y agoI always figured it was a pun on COM.
- cek 15y agoThere's actually some truth to this.
- neilk 15y agoI worked at a company that was a sometime-partner of Microsoft in its efforts to get other languages running on the CLR. You have to understand that Microsoft had spent most of the 90s being clueless about the internet. Then actively trying to kill it. But by 2001, their strategy was to embrace and extend internet protocols and technologies so they would be forever tied to Microsoft. My impression was that .NET was a marketing term for a number of unrelated technologies that all served this overarching goal, that all came out roughly around 2001. They were saying to big corporations, that your choice wasn't Microsoft versus the internet, Microsoft WAS the internet. Only better. C# and the CLR were there to counter Java and the JVM. Their concept of Web Services was to make web technologies a mere transport layer for an RPC protocol called SOAP, which you would build with Microsoft IDEs. Hailstorm and Passport were an attempt to make Microsoft the centralized broker for all sensitive information on the internet. Think Facebook Connect, only imagine it was more corporate and business focused, and knew your credit card number. Anyway, Hailstorm/Passport and Web Services are dead, but The ".NET Framework" lives on in the CLR and C#, which were actually rather good even apart from Microsoft's strategizing.
- fhars 15y agoYour impression sounds plausible. I have always seen .NET as a me-too marketing reaction to Sun's cheesy "we are the dot in .com" (as for example on the first slide of this 1999 ppt presentation on the future of java: http://www.java-forum-stuttgart.de/jfs/1999/folien/B7_Jim_Constantine/B7_Jim_Constantine.ppt http://www.java-forum-stuttgart.de/jfs/1999/folien/B7_Jim_Co... )
- neilk 15y agoI doubt it's a reaction - it was just that, at the time, a domain name was a symbol of newness, coolness, and gobs of money. "blahblahblah.com" was something that even the most clueless IT executive knew meant "the internet". So both companies would want to exploit that.
- savrajsingh 15y agoFun fact: office 2003 was originally designed around these APIs, and it was planned as a cloud offering. The world just wasn't ready for it back then.
- thebluesky 15y ago"Why was .NET called .NET?" Because they couldn't call it Java: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project_cool/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project...
- blumentopf 15y agoThe new name ".NET" for NGWS was unveiled June 22, 2000. (Source: http://heise.de/-26825 http://heise.de/-26825 -- in German) In the months leading up to the announcement, Microsoft had registered a truck load of domains including: dot-in-the-dot.com, dot-in-the-dot-com.org, dot-in-the-dot-com.net, dot-in-the-dot-com.com, dot-in-the-dot.net, dot-in-the-dot.org, dot-truth.org und dot-truth.net. (Source: http://heise.de/-27004 http://heise.de/-27004 -- in German) So clearly the name .NET was a play on Sun's "we're the dot in .com" stategy. They noticed Sun's success with Java and the JVM in enterprise software development and started their Xeroxes as usual. By the way -- Loved Sun's ad campaign back then: http://www.bevinceengel.com/SUN-MICROSYSTEMS-THE-DOT http://www.bevinceengel.com/SUN-MICROSYSTEMS-THE-DOT
- jiggy2011 15y agoI think at one point .Net was going to be the next major brand for all MS products. At one point MSN Messenger was called ".Net Messenger" before it was renamed to Windows Live. I imagine the branding didn't work for consumer products because nobody had any idea what it meant. Hell , I had no idea what it meant. I remember trying to figure out what .Net was because I had heard so much about it , but all I could get from MS' website was jargon and buzzwords about "enterprise web services". It wasn't until I started writing C# code that integrated so seemlessly with old VB code and started being able to do things easily (like sockets , databases and GUIs) that I would previously have had to dig through obscure C++ APIs for that I "got it".
- andrewtbham 15y agoIt certainly wasn't where it would be an easy distinct name to search.
- joejohnson 15y agoWhat's with the deletionism at Stack Overflow. Do they really feel that these "off topic" posts detract from the overall quality of the site?