5 ms·

VS lock in is a very real thing. At my current employer, there is no way they could ever come off of VS and .Net because of the lack of polyglots in the office.

by SDGT 13y ago

VS lock in is a very real thing. At my current employer, there is no way they could ever come off of VS and .Net because of the lack of polyglots in the office. There is one of us that does Java, 3 that do PHP (only in the last 6 months), and 6 that are set up for .Net MVC. Management just can't spare the costs to retrain, and none of these guys go home and code on non MS platforms.

sz4kerto 13y ago
That's not what people call lock-in. Then there's Javascript+Sublime lock-in, OCAML lock-in, Emacs lock-in...
michaelmior 13y ago
What about Mono? I have no idea how practical this is for real code bases, but I've used it successfully on several smaller projects.
- gabriel 13y ago
  Mono is quite practical. However, C# is one thing, and the .NET Memory Model is quite another. The memory model is, IMHO, where Microsoft is pushing the limits of the existing C# language.
  - dewiz 13y ago
    could someone point to some article that expand on this topic ? thanks
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    > The memory model is, IMHO, where Microsoft is pushing the limits of the existing C# language. What has Microsoft changed in the .NET memory model that makes you think they're pushing the limits? From what I can tell, the .NET memory model is one of the things that has changed the least. The languages have changed a lot faster than the memory model.
- Moto7451 13y ago
  I have Mono projects in production. Xamarin Studio is pretty nice these days. I don't have a lot of performance sensitive .Net code so I don't notice any real difference between Microsoft's and Xamarin's implementations. One problem I'm running into at the moment is I'm trying to port a vendor's reference SOAP Service over to Mono/Linux and their provided secret sauce DLL is blowing up when calling their objects' constructors. I'm yet to pin it on Linux or Mono. Here's hoping the vendor is Mono friendly and willing to debug it. If not we're going to have one oddball Windows server in a sea of Ubuntu EC2 instances.
  - itsboring 13y ago
    Same here, a number of Mono apps in production, both on mobile and desktop. A lot of my recent work has to do with OpenGL-related stuff running on Linux using Mono/MonoDevelop. I have had neither performance-related issues nor stability issues. Ironically, we have some large-ish C# code-bases that run on everything but Windows.
  - LordIllidan 13y ago
    Personally, I find Xamarin Studio to be quite buggy, often needing several quit+restart a day (I do iPhone apps), a colleague also does Android apps with Xamarin (on Windows) and experiences similar problems.
alkonaut 13y ago
I could switch languages more easily than I could switch dev environment. The lock in to me is bssically simply that there aren't many other good language+IDE combos out there. There are plenty of languages that are interesting but very few come with a great IDE. I'd love to do Rust or Haskell all day, but I'm sure as hell not going to vim/emacs/sublime from VS. I almost envy those who never started using and IDE and can be productive with a text editor, their threshold to switch language is much Lower. Luckily VS at least supports C++, F#, JS and python so it's not impossible to cover quite a lot of languages in it.
- usea 13y ago
  I love Visual Studio, but many of the JetBrains IDEs are great too, like WebStorm and PyCharm.
  - alkonaut 13y ago
    Yep, and VS isn't really "complete" without resharper which is a shame because the full versions of VS are already quite expensive.
    - breischl 13y ago
      I tried out Resharper for the entire evaluation period and then dropped it. There were a few nice things, but nothing that was just leaps and bounds better than built in VS features. But everyone says it's necessary, so I keep wondering if I somehow missed the killer features. What are the features of Resharper that make you say VS isn't complete without it?
      - ehaughee 13y ago
        In my experience it isn't one, two, or even three killer features. It's the aggregate additional polish and productivity increase gleaned from 10 to 20 minor features that shave fractions of seconds and remove a click or two off of incredibly common actions. And I just use the default settings.
spo81rty 13y ago
Build a huge app in any language and you have technology lock in.

by SDGT 13y ago

sz4kerto 13y ago

That's not what people call lock-in. Then there's Javascript+Sublime lock-in, OCAML lock-in, Emacs lock-in...

michaelmior 13y ago

What about Mono? I have no idea how practical this is for real code bases, but I've used it successfully on several smaller projects.

gabriel 13y ago
Mono is quite practical. However, C# is one thing, and the .NET Memory Model is quite another. The memory model is, IMHO, where Microsoft is pushing the limits of the existing C# language.
- dewiz 13y ago
  could someone point to some article that expand on this topic ? thanks
- tanzam75 13y ago
  > The memory model is, IMHO, where Microsoft is pushing the limits of the existing C# language. What has Microsoft changed in the .NET memory model that makes you think they're pushing the limits? From what I can tell, the .NET memory model is one of the things that has changed the least. The languages have changed a lot faster than the memory model.
Moto7451 13y ago
I have Mono projects in production. Xamarin Studio is pretty nice these days. I don't have a lot of performance sensitive .Net code so I don't notice any real difference between Microsoft's and Xamarin's implementations. One problem I'm running into at the moment is I'm trying to port a vendor's reference SOAP Service over to Mono/Linux and their provided secret sauce DLL is blowing up when calling their objects' constructors. I'm yet to pin it on Linux or Mono. Here's hoping the vendor is Mono friendly and willing to debug it. If not we're going to have one oddball Windows server in a sea of Ubuntu EC2 instances.
- itsboring 13y ago
  Same here, a number of Mono apps in production, both on mobile and desktop. A lot of my recent work has to do with OpenGL-related stuff running on Linux using Mono/MonoDevelop. I have had neither performance-related issues nor stability issues. Ironically, we have some large-ish C# code-bases that run on everything but Windows.
- LordIllidan 13y ago
  Personally, I find Xamarin Studio to be quite buggy, often needing several quit+restart a day (I do iPhone apps), a colleague also does Android apps with Xamarin (on Windows) and experiences similar problems.

alkonaut 13y ago

I could switch languages more easily than I could switch dev environment. The lock in to me is bssically simply that there aren't many other good language+IDE combos out there. There are plenty of languages that are interesting but very few come with a great IDE. I'd love to do Rust or Haskell all day, but I'm sure as hell not going to vim/emacs/sublime from VS. I almost envy those who never started using and IDE and can be productive with a text editor, their threshold to switch language is much Lower. Luckily VS at least supports C++, F#, JS and python so it's not impossible to cover quite a lot of languages in it.

usea 13y ago
I love Visual Studio, but many of the JetBrains IDEs are great too, like WebStorm and PyCharm.
- alkonaut 13y ago
  Yep, and VS isn't really "complete" without resharper which is a shame because the full versions of VS are already quite expensive.
  - breischl 13y ago
    I tried out Resharper for the entire evaluation period and then dropped it. There were a few nice things, but nothing that was just leaps and bounds better than built in VS features. But everyone says it's necessary, so I keep wondering if I somehow missed the killer features. What are the features of Resharper that make you say VS isn't complete without it?
    - ehaughee 13y ago
      In my experience it isn't one, two, or even three killer features. It's the aggregate additional polish and productivity increase gleaned from 10 to 20 minor features that shave fractions of seconds and remove a click or two off of incredibly common actions. And I just use the default settings.

spo81rty 13y ago

Build a huge app in any language and you have technology lock in.