5 ms·

Its hard for me to say this in some ways, but of the bigcos, I'm most bullish on Microsoft. I might actually go stand in line (if there are any) for the Surfa

Its hard for me to say this in some ways, but of the bigcos, I'm most bullish on Microsoft. I might actually go stand in line (if there are any) for the Surface tablet and maybe even a Windows Phone 8 device. They are (finally) making the right moves and doing it in a consistent and open way. Any Microsoft insiders know who is driving all this change? ScottGu? Steven Sinofsky?

gringomorcego 14y ago
If anything I'd bet that the 'fiefdoms' have quit warring as much?
mythz 14y ago
It looks like they've started their big Open initiative after they found a business case for it with Windows Azure where almost everything OSS'ed in recent times runs on it. When you're a cloud provider it makes sense to appear "more open" and support as many technologies as possible == more customers - which is good from the broad developer community as we would have never have seen their node.js on Windows support otherwise.
ams6110 14y ago
Seems more like a desperation move to me. Microsoft have almost no presence in popular web apps or mobile. Almost no startups or established services use the Microsoft stack. Maybe they think that by open sourcing they will get a look by devs/shops that would never have considered them before. I still think it's a long shot. The best development platform for .NET is Visual Studio and Windows. And the "cool startups" all use Mac OS or Linux. .NET has been sold as an enterprise platform since the beginning. That's what it's thought of by most people, and I don't really see this changing anything. Windows Phone is way late to the party and isn't going to do anything significant in the market. Microsoft will continue to be primarily a platform for building enterprise-type CRUD apps.
- mythz 14y ago
  Note: only their Azure + DEV arm is OSS happy - which is a result from making money with it on Azure. Their Windows/WP/UI projects are violently closed source, almost all cross-platform Rich/UI initiatives have been killed since Sinofsky has taken back the helm. Personally they should do all C#/.NET devs a service and provide better integration/code-reuse with MonoDroid/MonoTouch, but as they don't see it in their best interest they're pushing for platform-lockin. Which is a strange play when you're hopelessly behind the incumbents. This is starting to be a real problem for .NET devs now (since MS is losing their influence) as they become pawns in Microsoft's platform strategies, whilst we (C# devs) miss out on the most exciting platforms Microsoft doesn't want you to develop for, e.g: iOS/Android, NaCL, Unity3d, RaspPi, etc. We're just lucky Mono exists which runs on all these platforms.
  - barista 14y ago
    "mythz", Merto style apps can always be done in HTML5, CSS, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211385.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br21138... so I am not sure why you say that the cross platform rich initiatives have been killed. More details: http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/free-microsoft-press-ebook-preview-programming-windows-8-apps-html-css-javascript-143329 http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/...
    - mythz 14y ago
      "This couldn’t be further from the truth. The use of HTML5 + JavaScript in Windows 8 is about as proprietary as using XAML + .NET." http://dougseven.com/2011/10/24/language-choice-in-windows-8-is-not-about-portability/ http://dougseven.com/2011/10/24/language-choice-in-windows-8... Just because it uses JS doesn't mean its portable! It has proprietary APIS + hooks making it non portable.
      - shanselman 14y ago
        That's no different from using HTML5+JavaScript against browser specific APIs or using CSS3 vendor prefixes. Calling external stuff from JavaScript (even if that external thing is Windows itself) is not new and it's not bad that it's not portable any more than writing XUL wasn't portable.
- jmcqk6 14y ago
  There are plenty of startups that have been successful on the .NET stack. The one that pops to mind first is Stack Overflow. .NET & XNA are pretty popular in indie games due to exposure to the xbox. There are many examples, but they don't tend to over lap much with the crowd here at HN.
  - notJim 14y ago
    What's the second one that pops to mind? And, because I can actually name a second one :p, what's the third?
    - alexro 14y ago
      The second one - even before the first one - is MySpace :)
      - mythz 14y ago
        MySpace isn't exactly a great example since many suggest its death spiral is due to their bet on Microsoft technology and .NET :) http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/24/myspaces-death-spiral-due-to-bets-on-los-angeles-and-microsoft/ http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/24/myspaces-death-spiral-due-t... I'm not sure Plenty of Fish is a great proof either (that .NET is good for a start-up) since it was built by just 1 man, who just uses Response.Write http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture/ http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture/: >> In the process of getting rid of ASP.NET repeaters and instead uses the append string thing or response.write... Even as a long time .NET developer, I don't believe .NET is optimal for Internet Start-Ups. Most of the pro-web talent are in Ruby/Python/node.js camps where they enjoy first class support of all the popular web DSL's (e.g. less, sass, jade, handlebars, etc). As well as all the bundling, optimization and minification tools which were available for years in other platforms and have only recently been a supported option in .NET with System.Web.Optimization. The pro-web (Single Page App) community is relatively non-existant in .NET. E.g. none of the showcase apps on http://backbonejs.org http://backbonejs.org (the most popular SPA JS fx) are in .NET. The ASP.NET website packaging model doesn't scale (productivity-wise), since the larger the website becomes the slower build/iteration times get - which is especially important for start-ups. I do believe typed languages are better suited for typed back-end services - I just no longer believe in them for fuzzy development tasks like UI/HTML generation, automated scripts, etc.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  On Windows many new desktop applications are now being done in C# actually. In the game industry, the game development tools which used to be developed in C++/MFC are now being coded in C#. Microsoft is hiring compiler developers to implement native code compilation in their C#, if you search their careers portal. Before Mac OS X, open source was also unheard of at Apple, if it wasn't for their despair at the time and the NeXTStep team, I am not sure if Apple would have so much open source projects.
HarshaThota 14y ago
Not a Microsoft insider but from what I've heard it's mostly coming from ScottGu and the rest of the DevDiv folks.

gringomorcego 14y ago

If anything I'd bet that the 'fiefdoms' have quit warring as much?

mythz 14y ago

It looks like they've started their big Open initiative after they found a business case for it with Windows Azure where almost everything OSS'ed in recent times runs on it. When you're a cloud provider it makes sense to appear "more open" and support as many technologies as possible == more customers - which is good from the broad developer community as we would have never have seen their node.js on Windows support otherwise.

ams6110 14y ago

Seems more like a desperation move to me. Microsoft have almost no presence in popular web apps or mobile. Almost no startups or established services use the Microsoft stack. Maybe they think that by open sourcing they will get a look by devs/shops that would never have considered them before. I still think it's a long shot. The best development platform for .NET is Visual Studio and Windows. And the "cool startups" all use Mac OS or Linux. .NET has been sold as an enterprise platform since the beginning. That's what it's thought of by most people, and I don't really see this changing anything. Windows Phone is way late to the party and isn't going to do anything significant in the market. Microsoft will continue to be primarily a platform for building enterprise-type CRUD apps.

mythz 14y ago
Note: only their Azure + DEV arm is OSS happy - which is a result from making money with it on Azure. Their Windows/WP/UI projects are violently closed source, almost all cross-platform Rich/UI initiatives have been killed since Sinofsky has taken back the helm. Personally they should do all C#/.NET devs a service and provide better integration/code-reuse with MonoDroid/MonoTouch, but as they don't see it in their best interest they're pushing for platform-lockin. Which is a strange play when you're hopelessly behind the incumbents. This is starting to be a real problem for .NET devs now (since MS is losing their influence) as they become pawns in Microsoft's platform strategies, whilst we (C# devs) miss out on the most exciting platforms Microsoft doesn't want you to develop for, e.g: iOS/Android, NaCL, Unity3d, RaspPi, etc. We're just lucky Mono exists which runs on all these platforms.
- barista 14y ago
  "mythz", Merto style apps can always be done in HTML5, CSS, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211385.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br21138... so I am not sure why you say that the cross platform rich initiatives have been killed. More details: http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/free-microsoft-press-ebook-preview-programming-windows-8-apps-html-css-javascript-143329 http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/...
  - mythz 14y ago
    "This couldn’t be further from the truth. The use of HTML5 + JavaScript in Windows 8 is about as proprietary as using XAML + .NET." http://dougseven.com/2011/10/24/language-choice-in-windows-8-is-not-about-portability/ http://dougseven.com/2011/10/24/language-choice-in-windows-8... Just because it uses JS doesn't mean its portable! It has proprietary APIS + hooks making it non portable.
    - shanselman 14y ago
      That's no different from using HTML5+JavaScript against browser specific APIs or using CSS3 vendor prefixes. Calling external stuff from JavaScript (even if that external thing is Windows itself) is not new and it's not bad that it's not portable any more than writing XUL wasn't portable.
jmcqk6 14y ago
There are plenty of startups that have been successful on the .NET stack. The one that pops to mind first is Stack Overflow. .NET & XNA are pretty popular in indie games due to exposure to the xbox. There are many examples, but they don't tend to over lap much with the crowd here at HN.
- notJim 14y ago
  What's the second one that pops to mind? And, because I can actually name a second one :p, what's the third?
  - alexro 14y ago
    The second one - even before the first one - is MySpace :)
    - mythz 14y ago
      MySpace isn't exactly a great example since many suggest its death spiral is due to their bet on Microsoft technology and .NET :) http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/24/myspaces-death-spiral-due-to-bets-on-los-angeles-and-microsoft/ http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/24/myspaces-death-spiral-due-t... I'm not sure Plenty of Fish is a great proof either (that .NET is good for a start-up) since it was built by just 1 man, who just uses Response.Write http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture/ http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture/: >> In the process of getting rid of ASP.NET repeaters and instead uses the append string thing or response.write... Even as a long time .NET developer, I don't believe .NET is optimal for Internet Start-Ups. Most of the pro-web talent are in Ruby/Python/node.js camps where they enjoy first class support of all the popular web DSL's (e.g. less, sass, jade, handlebars, etc). As well as all the bundling, optimization and minification tools which were available for years in other platforms and have only recently been a supported option in .NET with System.Web.Optimization. The pro-web (Single Page App) community is relatively non-existant in .NET. E.g. none of the showcase apps on http://backbonejs.org http://backbonejs.org (the most popular SPA JS fx) are in .NET. The ASP.NET website packaging model doesn't scale (productivity-wise), since the larger the website becomes the slower build/iteration times get - which is especially important for start-ups. I do believe typed languages are better suited for typed back-end services - I just no longer believe in them for fuzzy development tasks like UI/HTML generation, automated scripts, etc.
pjmlp 14y ago
On Windows many new desktop applications are now being done in C# actually. In the game industry, the game development tools which used to be developed in C++/MFC are now being coded in C#. Microsoft is hiring compiler developers to implement native code compilation in their C#, if you search their careers portal. Before Mac OS X, open source was also unheard of at Apple, if it wasn't for their despair at the time and the NeXTStep team, I am not sure if Apple would have so much open source projects.

HarshaThota 14y ago

Not a Microsoft insider but from what I've heard it's mostly coming from ScottGu and the rest of the DevDiv folks.