8 ms·

Why are people always writing these types of posts? .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered, no need to bash Microsoft on that.

by savoy11 16y ago

Why are people always writing these types of posts? .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered, no need to bash Microsoft on that. And what's the deal with licensing? We, as software developers and entrepreneurs, eventually want to charge money for some product/service and I personally find it much easier to do in .NET/Corporate settings - Microsoft has just managed to educate people that software costs money. I find it much, much harder to charge money (I'm in the developer tools space) in the "FREE", open source, free is beer, as... whatever, and all that crap world, where people would just expect you to work full-time several years with $0 revenue - I just do not understand all that crap. So massive respect to Microsoft - these guys are doing us a huge favor by educating people that software costs money.

mathgladiator 16y ago
> I'm in the developer tools space We are the worst market out there to sell because we all love to build different colored dog houses and paint bike sheds various shades purple. - - - I've loved VS.NET in the past, but it doesn't make me happy any more. Personally, I can't have fun working with it. It is impressive, but it lacks soul. My rants on IDEs in general: http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/on-ides-refinement-of-my-30-lessons.html http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/on-ides-refinement-of-... http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/if-i-were-to-write-another-ide-or-being.html http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/if-i-were-to-write-ano...
blub 16y ago
> So massive respect to Microsoft - these guys are doing us a huge favor by educating people that software costs money. Unlike Apple and Google which educate people that software costs 0.99$ or is free. What the heck can I charge if Id software publishes their latest game for 0.99$?
joe_the_user 16y ago
Aside from the many valid MS-specific issues, my recent take on "why I abandoned X for Y" is that programming is still an inherently hard and frustrating activity. The final results are frustrating compared to the promise of X; The problems of Ruby-on-Rails or .NET or beautiful Perl one-liners whatever don't appear tell you get to a certain scale. So the next great thing (or the retro-great-thing or whatever) can always look good compared to the big mess you've land yourself in. And .NET could well be the best engineered system in the world for all I know but it's crazy frustrating once you get to a certain scale. Therefore, we should abandon X and do Y, whose promises haven't yet been broken.
rbanffy 16y ago
> Why are people always writing these types of posts? Most probably because... > .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered ... simply isn't true. Unless you are saying it's one of the 10.000 best programming environments ever engineered or that others, like Smalltalk/80, Genera, Interlisp, Turbo Pascal, the NeXT toolset, Zope, Rails, Django were "grown" rather than engineered. I agree VS is and has consistently been the best single IDE when you are using Windows to write software that runs on Windows, but it fails miserably out of its narrow domain (however deep it is, as it accounts for a huge market share). It's much like Xcode being the best IDE for using an Apple computer to write software that runs on Apple computers. It certainly is. Microsoft deserves some recognition, for many times they delivered what the market needed. From its very first BASIC interpreter, to Windows, to Windows for Workgroups, to the first affordable alternative to Unix on RISC boxes (NT, for those too young to remember), to Visual Basic (the only language many corporate developers ever knew) they more or less set the tone of the entire PC industry. As for charging money for software, the market changed. It's like complaining you can no longer sell ice blocks because everybody owns a refrigerator or that you don't sell as many carriages as you once did because people prefer cars. Embrace the change, use the tools and help build them into even more impressive ones (from the list I showed in the first "real" paragraph, 4 have always either been open-source or have a direct descendant that is). You can use them for free, you can build on them and you can improve them so they better suit your needs.
- vilya 16y ago
  "It's much like Xcode being the best IDE for using an Apple computer to write software that runs on Apple computers. It certainly is." Actually, so long as I'm writing C++, I greatly prefer QtCreator over XCode. It actually helps me navigate my code, whereas XCode just seems to get in the way. I'd agree that XCode is the best IDE for writing Objective-C apps for OS X on a Mac... but only because it's in a field of one (as far as I know). In my opinion it's a truly terrible IDE.
- Dn_Ab 16y ago
  >As for charging money for software, the market changed. I do not agree. Nothing is free, its just that costs continually get shifted else where into abstraction. If you pay money to advertise your service then you and (others) are all indirectly paying for your software (and others') so you can be able to offer your software 'free'. If you say, choose to monetize by ads. Really there has not yet emerged an economic model that beats simple old just charge money for it in terms of ease of implementation and use, reliability and path to profitability for someone starting off. Sell Ads, take a minuscule rent to display ads other people bought, micro-payments, licensing, charging for support (urgh!), free (crippled) version to bait to a paid version are actually all more of the same. Except that all but the last requiring a large amount of traction in activity, reputation, users or both. Something very not easy to get, requiring a much longer runway than is feasible for most.unless they wish to seek investment, which is its own can of worms. But I do agree, this direct charging is not going to work much longer than this decade I don't think. It is going to be very interesting to see what sort of new economic models evolve to support consumption and greed. These are interesting times. I hope to be part of it.
jules 16y ago
Which developer tools are you building?
recoiledsnake 16y ago
>Why are people always writing these types of posts? .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered, no need to bash Microsoft on that. People write these kinds of posts all the time. You see more of them on sites like this because people who tend to dislike and put down Microsoft and feel good about their choice constantly upvote this kind of posts. Stackoverflow is a example of a site which shows off that C#/.NET done in a proper way is a very platform.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > shows off that C#/.NET done in a proper way is a very platform. I could agree C#/.NET is a very platform, if I could understand what that means. With lots of work and a talented team like SO's you can do a lot of extraordinary things done. The fact that SO stands apart as "C#/,NET done right" shows how much work it is to build a website on that stack. Not everybody needs to be a Facebook.
daviding 16y ago
I certainly didn't think I was bashing Microsoft or dismissing paying for all software. As for why people are writing these, I'm not sure - for me it was just a 'I'm writing stuff on other stacks now, here's the blog'.

by savoy11 16y ago

mathgladiator 16y ago

> I'm in the developer tools space We are the worst market out there to sell because we all love to build different colored dog houses and paint bike sheds various shades purple. - - - I've loved VS.NET in the past, but it doesn't make me happy any more. Personally, I can't have fun working with it. It is impressive, but it lacks soul. My rants on IDEs in general: http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/on-ides-refinement-of-my-30-lessons.html http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/on-ides-refinement-of-... http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/if-i-were-to-write-another-ide-or-being.html http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/if-i-were-to-write-ano...

blub 16y ago

> So massive respect to Microsoft - these guys are doing us a huge favor by educating people that software costs money. Unlike Apple and Google which educate people that software costs 0.99$ or is free. What the heck can I charge if Id software publishes their latest game for 0.99$?

joe_the_user 16y ago

Aside from the many valid MS-specific issues, my recent take on "why I abandoned X for Y" is that programming is still an inherently hard and frustrating activity. The final results are frustrating compared to the promise of X; The problems of Ruby-on-Rails or .NET or beautiful Perl one-liners whatever don't appear tell you get to a certain scale. So the next great thing (or the retro-great-thing or whatever) can always look good compared to the big mess you've land yourself in. And .NET could well be the best engineered system in the world for all I know but it's crazy frustrating once you get to a certain scale. Therefore, we should abandon X and do Y, whose promises haven't yet been broken.

rbanffy 16y ago

> Why are people always writing these types of posts? Most probably because... > .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered ... simply isn't true. Unless you are saying it's one of the 10.000 best programming environments ever engineered or that others, like Smalltalk/80, Genera, Interlisp, Turbo Pascal, the NeXT toolset, Zope, Rails, Django were "grown" rather than engineered. I agree VS is and has consistently been the best single IDE when you are using Windows to write software that runs on Windows, but it fails miserably out of its narrow domain (however deep it is, as it accounts for a huge market share). It's much like Xcode being the best IDE for using an Apple computer to write software that runs on Apple computers. It certainly is. Microsoft deserves some recognition, for many times they delivered what the market needed. From its very first BASIC interpreter, to Windows, to Windows for Workgroups, to the first affordable alternative to Unix on RISC boxes (NT, for those too young to remember), to Visual Basic (the only language many corporate developers ever knew) they more or less set the tone of the entire PC industry. As for charging money for software, the market changed. It's like complaining you can no longer sell ice blocks because everybody owns a refrigerator or that you don't sell as many carriages as you once did because people prefer cars. Embrace the change, use the tools and help build them into even more impressive ones (from the list I showed in the first "real" paragraph, 4 have always either been open-source or have a direct descendant that is). You can use them for free, you can build on them and you can improve them so they better suit your needs.

vilya 16y ago
"It's much like Xcode being the best IDE for using an Apple computer to write software that runs on Apple computers. It certainly is." Actually, so long as I'm writing C++, I greatly prefer QtCreator over XCode. It actually helps me navigate my code, whereas XCode just seems to get in the way. I'd agree that XCode is the best IDE for writing Objective-C apps for OS X on a Mac... but only because it's in a field of one (as far as I know). In my opinion it's a truly terrible IDE.
Dn_Ab 16y ago
>As for charging money for software, the market changed. I do not agree. Nothing is free, its just that costs continually get shifted else where into abstraction. If you pay money to advertise your service then you and (others) are all indirectly paying for your software (and others') so you can be able to offer your software 'free'. If you say, choose to monetize by ads. Really there has not yet emerged an economic model that beats simple old just charge money for it in terms of ease of implementation and use, reliability and path to profitability for someone starting off. Sell Ads, take a minuscule rent to display ads other people bought, micro-payments, licensing, charging for support (urgh!), free (crippled) version to bait to a paid version are actually all more of the same. Except that all but the last requiring a large amount of traction in activity, reputation, users or both. Something very not easy to get, requiring a much longer runway than is feasible for most.unless they wish to seek investment, which is its own can of worms. But I do agree, this direct charging is not going to work much longer than this decade I don't think. It is going to be very interesting to see what sort of new economic models evolve to support consumption and greed. These are interesting times. I hope to be part of it.

jules 16y ago

Which developer tools are you building?

recoiledsnake 16y ago

>Why are people always writing these types of posts? .NET/VS.NET is one of the best programming environments ever engineered, no need to bash Microsoft on that. People write these kinds of posts all the time. You see more of them on sites like this because people who tend to dislike and put down Microsoft and feel good about their choice constantly upvote this kind of posts. Stackoverflow is a example of a site which shows off that C#/.NET done in a proper way is a very platform.

rbanffy 16y ago
> shows off that C#/.NET done in a proper way is a very platform. I could agree C#/.NET is a very platform, if I could understand what that means. With lots of work and a talented team like SO's you can do a lot of extraordinary things done. The fact that SO stands apart as "C#/,NET done right" shows how much work it is to build a website on that stack. Not everybody needs to be a Facebook.

daviding 16y ago

I certainly didn't think I was bashing Microsoft or dismissing paying for all software. As for why people are writing these, I'm not sure - for me it was just a 'I'm writing stuff on other stacks now, here's the blog'.