5 ms·

I don't use .NET because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what .NET means. Does it mean the Visual Studio IDE and tools? I'm not a fan of those. They're good

I don't use .NET because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what .NET means. Does it mean the Visual Studio IDE and tools? I'm not a fan of those. They're good at what they do, but I prefer tools like TextMate, Emacs, or Vim. Does it mean VB.NET or C#, the two languages I immediately associate with the term .NET? Does it mean the CLR and any/all languages built on it? Either way, I'm a web developer, and it takes me all of two seconds to do: rails -d mysql project_name script/server and setting that up took about fifteen minutes of compiling and installing things for free. I could switch to IronRuby, but I don't see the upside. Does it mean the ASP.NET web stack? I (and my company) deploy to *nix servers, and switching to Windows servers isn't in the cards. The biggest problem, in my case, is I don't care about .NET -- the term to me implies "the Microsoft way", a catchall term for using MS technologies, which I'm not interested in. I can become interested in an IDE that runs on my platform of choice, and I can become interested in a language runtime that's faster than, say, MRI; but only if these things don't also imply switching to an all-MS stack. (edit: formatting)

callmeed 17y ago
I wish I could upvote this 10x. I have no idea what .NET means today other than the little insight I get when listening to the Stack Overflow podcast (which isn't much). Not only do I not know what .NET means, I wouldn't know where to start learning or what the requirements are ... Where is the .NET equivalent of these types of resources? (I really want to know): http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-on-rails http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-... http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mod_wsgi-to-serve-your-application http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mo... http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts http://railscasts.com/ http://railscasts.com/ http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/ http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/ Furthermore: - Can I spin up a $20/month .NET-compatible VPS? - Can I easily tie my .NET apps into cloud services like S3 (I can tie S3 file attachment into my Rails models in minutes)? I don't ask these questions to be flippant–I honestly don't know the answer because I never bothered to search it out.
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  Awesome, awesome, awesome feedback. I share your frustration and am working like made to get that religion into our core business. What some fun: type the following query into bing.com: "Getting Started with .NET" - check where the links take you. Try the same thing with PHP, Erlang, Ruby on Rails, etc.
BrandonWatson 17y ago
This is fantastic feedback, and not too dissimilar to the drum beat I have been banging internally. Visit a bookstore recently? Find me the book that helps you build a ".NET" app. Good luck with that. Want to build a Rails app? The books are right there, and my choice is easy.
- aconbere 17y ago
  It's not just the books, it's the web resources as well (possibly more importantly). One thing to think about is that if MS is serious about reaching devs like this. Then they need to start understanding the appeal of frameworks that we're using. The fact that I can start a rails project, edit all the code I want, and run all my tests. Without really investing in any extraneous technology (for instance an IDE or a WebServer or a large testing framework). Are all enormous bonuses. And the fact that I can do that with every modern framework I can think of speaks volumes about the weight that we as a community put on that feature. You could try to bend all the devs into the MS way of doing things with complex tools and large solutions. Or you could attempt to make tools that fit a modern developer.
  - BrandonWatson 17y ago
    >>>You could try to bend all the devs into the MS way of doing things with complex tools and large solutions. Or you could attempt to make tools that fit a modern developer. Yes, yes, yes. Agreed. Scott guthrie and crew are doing good work here, but we clearly have a long way to go. Thanks for this honest feedback.
Maro 17y ago
I don't use Ruby on Rails, because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what Ruby on Rails means. Does it mean using a Mac and TextMate like that guy in those cool screencasts? Does it mean Ruby, the language? I don't care about that. Does it mean Rails, the framework? I don't really understand the appeal. The other day it took me several hours to get Ruby and Rails running with Apache, then several hours to get Redmine working, and the end result is that it's dog slow, eats up all the VPS' memory, while all the app is supposed to be doing is putting 100 byte bug reports into Mysql and listing them 10 at a time. The biggest problem seems to be that "the Rails way" is to say "disk is free, memory is free, cpu is free, bandwidth is free, yo mama is free", the end result is stuff that is not a lot of code but still bloatware in terms of resource consumption. Cheers!
- generalk 17y ago
  To be fair, you can answer those questions on the Ruby on Rails site, or through a number of google searches. > I don't use Ruby on Rails, because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what Ruby on Rails means. Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration. (from http://rubyonrails.org http://rubyonrails.org) > Does it mean using a Mac and TextMate like that guy in those cool screencasts? TextMate on OS X has long been the favored Rails editor, but the classic editors are still going strong. See VIM for Rails and Emacs for Rails. For a full-on IDE, check out RadRails, RubyMine, 3rd Rail, or Netbeans for Ruby. (from http://rubyonrails.org/download http://rubyonrails.org/download) > Does it mean Ruby, the language? I don't care about that. It means writing in Ruby, the language. If you don't care about that fine, but the answer is clear from the get-go. > Does it mean Rails, the framework? I don't really understand the appeal. Yes, Rails means Rails as a framework. The appeal (from the website) is being able to write clearer code because in most cases sane defaults are provided. The rest of your comment is specifically about your experience with one Rails app which I've never used, so I'm leaving that alone. The point of my comment wasn't to slam .NET. I've got no personal beef, but when someone asks why I don't do current_project as a .NET app I don't know how to respond because I don't know exactly what they mean.

callmeed 17y ago

I wish I could upvote this 10x. I have no idea what .NET means today other than the little insight I get when listening to the Stack Overflow podcast (which isn't much). Not only do I not know what .NET means, I wouldn't know where to start learning or what the requirements are ... Where is the .NET equivalent of these types of resources? (I really want to know): http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-on-rails http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-... http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mod_wsgi-to-serve-your-application http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mo... http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts http://railscasts.com/ http://railscasts.com/ http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/ http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/ Furthermore: - Can I spin up a $20/month .NET-compatible VPS? - Can I easily tie my .NET apps into cloud services like S3 (I can tie S3 file attachment into my Rails models in minutes)? I don't ask these questions to be flippant–I honestly don't know the answer because I never bothered to search it out.

BrandonWatson 17y ago
Awesome, awesome, awesome feedback. I share your frustration and am working like made to get that religion into our core business. What some fun: type the following query into bing.com: "Getting Started with .NET" - check where the links take you. Try the same thing with PHP, Erlang, Ruby on Rails, etc.

BrandonWatson 17y ago

This is fantastic feedback, and not too dissimilar to the drum beat I have been banging internally. Visit a bookstore recently? Find me the book that helps you build a ".NET" app. Good luck with that. Want to build a Rails app? The books are right there, and my choice is easy.

aconbere 17y ago
It's not just the books, it's the web resources as well (possibly more importantly). One thing to think about is that if MS is serious about reaching devs like this. Then they need to start understanding the appeal of frameworks that we're using. The fact that I can start a rails project, edit all the code I want, and run all my tests. Without really investing in any extraneous technology (for instance an IDE or a WebServer or a large testing framework). Are all enormous bonuses. And the fact that I can do that with every modern framework I can think of speaks volumes about the weight that we as a community put on that feature. You could try to bend all the devs into the MS way of doing things with complex tools and large solutions. Or you could attempt to make tools that fit a modern developer.
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  >>>You could try to bend all the devs into the MS way of doing things with complex tools and large solutions. Or you could attempt to make tools that fit a modern developer. Yes, yes, yes. Agreed. Scott guthrie and crew are doing good work here, but we clearly have a long way to go. Thanks for this honest feedback.

Maro 17y ago

I don't use Ruby on Rails, because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what Ruby on Rails means. Does it mean using a Mac and TextMate like that guy in those cool screencasts? Does it mean Ruby, the language? I don't care about that. Does it mean Rails, the framework? I don't really understand the appeal. The other day it took me several hours to get Ruby and Rails running with Apache, then several hours to get Redmine working, and the end result is that it's dog slow, eats up all the VPS' memory, while all the app is supposed to be doing is putting 100 byte bug reports into Mysql and listing them 10 at a time. The biggest problem seems to be that "the Rails way" is to say "disk is free, memory is free, cpu is free, bandwidth is free, yo mama is free", the end result is stuff that is not a lot of code but still bloatware in terms of resource consumption. Cheers!

generalk 17y ago
To be fair, you can answer those questions on the Ruby on Rails site, or through a number of google searches. > I don't use Ruby on Rails, because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what Ruby on Rails means. Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration. (from http://rubyonrails.org http://rubyonrails.org) > Does it mean using a Mac and TextMate like that guy in those cool screencasts? TextMate on OS X has long been the favored Rails editor, but the classic editors are still going strong. See VIM for Rails and Emacs for Rails. For a full-on IDE, check out RadRails, RubyMine, 3rd Rail, or Netbeans for Ruby. (from http://rubyonrails.org/download http://rubyonrails.org/download) > Does it mean Ruby, the language? I don't care about that. It means writing in Ruby, the language. If you don't care about that fine, but the answer is clear from the get-go. > Does it mean Rails, the framework? I don't really understand the appeal. Yes, Rails means Rails as a framework. The appeal (from the website) is being able to write clearer code because in most cases sane defaults are provided. The rest of your comment is specifically about your experience with one Rails app which I've never used, so I'm leaving that alone. The point of my comment wasn't to slam .NET. I've got no personal beef, but when someone asks why I don't do current_project as a .NET app I don't know how to respond because I don't know exactly what they mean.