3 ms·

Write .NET Code? There's a Big Prize For That.

21 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

clistctrl 17y ago
its to bad the project i'm most proud of is owned by my old company, and i don't have the rights to give them a demo.
- TheElder 17y ago
  And it's too bad that I'm not finished with my project to send off :-/
  - BrandonWatson 17y ago
    Anyone who has a cool or novel use of .NET can feel free to @reply me on Twitter or email me. I would love to blog about it. @BrandonWatson or brwatson [at] microsoft
SamAtt 17y ago
I’m not hating (I’m a .Net developer) but I don’t see the point of this. Even the worst of .Net haters wouldn’t claim you CAN’T do cool things with MS technology. They’d just say it’s harder and more expensive than doing it with Open Source :) I wish MS would put some money into contests the would improve what’s available to the community like "best open sourced component" or "best video tutorial"
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  Sam, you are reading my mind. My only job in life is to think about the developer on boarding experience. That includes how to get started, what you can do with it, community support, etc. You are spot on, and it's in the works.
  - oliverkofoed 17y ago
    In my humble opinion, the biggest advantage of .net, is visual studio. For the on boarding experience, i think it's really worth putting emphasis on the fact that the free Express versions are really fully functional products for daily use.
    - clistctrl 17y ago
      I would agree with that statement. I love Visual studio, its a great tool set. I use eclipse quite a lot, and on occasion I've been known to fire up netbeans.. but none of them seem as solid as visual studio does. Add in resharper and its an even more incredible platform.
    - BrandonWatson 17y ago
      It's a funny thing...when people talk about iPhone development, many times they remard on the quality of the tools - specifically XCode. IMHO, XCode is good, but loses out in a comparison to Visual Studio Express. It's a really great, and free, offering. When you start from VIM, Emacs or even TextMate, XCode is going to look good. Starting from the Visual Studio experience makes XCode look less stellar.
      - jeremymcanally 17y ago
        Well I think most of its shortcomings are due more to paradigm rather than quality of the tool. I love Visual Studio and I learned GUI development on Windows using it, so the general concept "feels" natural to me because that's how I learned. On the other hand, XCode works well for the way the GUI system works on OS X (i.e., outlets, actions, etc.). I think it's a bit of Apples to Oranges, especially since (a) they view the GUI and code interaction quite differently and (b) .NET is managed whereas XCode's languages usually aren't, making the toolset behave differently (for example, the .NET debugger can do a lot more introspection than the XCode debugger can in some situations). In any event, I dig VS.NET and use it for any Windows development I do. But I think your perspective is skewed a bit. I came from VS to these other tools and love them, but I'm a bit of a simplicity nut so it might just be my preferred workflow. :)
- dschobel 17y ago
  They’d just say it’s harder and more expensive than doing it with Open Source Well hopefully this program will highlight some usages of .net where open source (or proprietary non-MS) has traditionally dominated like scientific computing, core infrastructure or rich web applications. I've only ever seen .net in enterprise situations so here's hoping some novel things come out of this.

21 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

clistctrl 17y ago

its to bad the project i'm most proud of is owned by my old company, and i don't have the rights to give them a demo.

TheElder 17y ago
And it's too bad that I'm not finished with my project to send off :-/
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  Anyone who has a cool or novel use of .NET can feel free to @reply me on Twitter or email me. I would love to blog about it. @BrandonWatson or brwatson [at] microsoft

SamAtt 17y ago

I’m not hating (I’m a .Net developer) but I don’t see the point of this. Even the worst of .Net haters wouldn’t claim you CAN’T do cool things with MS technology. They’d just say it’s harder and more expensive than doing it with Open Source :) I wish MS would put some money into contests the would improve what’s available to the community like "best open sourced component" or "best video tutorial"

BrandonWatson 17y ago
Sam, you are reading my mind. My only job in life is to think about the developer on boarding experience. That includes how to get started, what you can do with it, community support, etc. You are spot on, and it's in the works.
- oliverkofoed 17y ago
  In my humble opinion, the biggest advantage of .net, is visual studio. For the on boarding experience, i think it's really worth putting emphasis on the fact that the free Express versions are really fully functional products for daily use.
  - clistctrl 17y ago
    I would agree with that statement. I love Visual studio, its a great tool set. I use eclipse quite a lot, and on occasion I've been known to fire up netbeans.. but none of them seem as solid as visual studio does. Add in resharper and its an even more incredible platform.
  - BrandonWatson 17y ago
    It's a funny thing...when people talk about iPhone development, many times they remard on the quality of the tools - specifically XCode. IMHO, XCode is good, but loses out in a comparison to Visual Studio Express. It's a really great, and free, offering. When you start from VIM, Emacs or even TextMate, XCode is going to look good. Starting from the Visual Studio experience makes XCode look less stellar.
    - jeremymcanally 17y ago
      Well I think most of its shortcomings are due more to paradigm rather than quality of the tool. I love Visual Studio and I learned GUI development on Windows using it, so the general concept "feels" natural to me because that's how I learned. On the other hand, XCode works well for the way the GUI system works on OS X (i.e., outlets, actions, etc.). I think it's a bit of Apples to Oranges, especially since (a) they view the GUI and code interaction quite differently and (b) .NET is managed whereas XCode's languages usually aren't, making the toolset behave differently (for example, the .NET debugger can do a lot more introspection than the XCode debugger can in some situations). In any event, I dig VS.NET and use it for any Windows development I do. But I think your perspective is skewed a bit. I came from VS to these other tools and love them, but I'm a bit of a simplicity nut so it might just be my preferred workflow. :)
dschobel 17y ago
They’d just say it’s harder and more expensive than doing it with Open Source Well hopefully this program will highlight some usages of .net where open source (or proprietary non-MS) has traditionally dominated like scientific computing, core infrastructure or rich web applications. I've only ever seen .net in enterprise situations so here's hoping some novel things come out of this.