6 ms·

It pains me if I am honest. Our CMS is built on .NET and it's like an uphill battle selling it as it's on IIS and it's .NET. I have played around with the idea

It pains me if I am honest. Our CMS is built on .NET and it's like an uphill battle selling it as it's on IIS and it's .NET. I have played around with the idea of reworking it into an open source language and open source database but I would miss Visual Studio and the language a lot. I don't get all the hate?

_random_ 13y ago
"open source language" - such as F# or Clojure? Both don't require you to abandon the best IDE on Earth. http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0e53eaf6-b031-4d12-84c1-9163db0b757e/view/Discussions http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0e53eaf6-b031-...
- gabriel 13y ago
  Whoa, didn't know about this. I'll check it out.
  - profquail 13y ago
    For F#, check out http://fsharp.org/ http://fsharp.org/
    - cjfont 13y ago
      On the topic of searching, F# should have a Hoogle equivalent.
blibble 13y ago
I'd guess it's because a lot of techies remember how 10 years ago MS exploited their monopoly to force their products onto the entire world? fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again...
- vowelless 13y ago
  I was a kid back then so I don't know the details of the story. Can you give me a primer?
  - jongalloway2 13y ago
    s/10/20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#Hist...
    - blibble 13y ago
      don't forget this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_compet...
      - tlarkworthy 13y ago
        also don't forget the gazillions of viruses in that era. Business networks paralysed by out of control worms on the internet. Good times.
      - us0r 13y ago
        don't forget to link to Google, Apple and EVERY other Fortune 500 company doing the same shit, different pile.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        They won't because this is HN and only Microsoft is bad.
- zanny 13y ago
  > fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again... Everyone I know for the most part types their documents in Microsoft Word on Windows computers. Sure, they got smartphones and tablets for the media consumption and facebook, but they don't even know an alternative "big boy" OS exists. They think Windows == computers. Which I think means MS is anything but irrelevant (no matter how hard I try to stuff opensuse down everyones throat).
Nate630 13y ago
I think people rarely take into consideration the cost of a project beyond the actual software. VS can save a lot of time – this extension is a good example.
pippy 13y ago
It's not .NET, .NET is a fantastic framework. The problem here is you're not just selling IIS and .NET, you're trying to sell the entire Microsoft ecosystem. There are so many MS components that just don't work on the Open Source world. Microsoft makes most of its money with its business products, so it's not cheap. Some companies just simply don't want to pay the Microsoft premium.
- _random_ 13y ago
  .NET is not a language. You always have to pay, but sometimes you pay directly and up-front.
- curiousDog 13y ago
  .NET is a framework. This is how the stack looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DotNet.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DotNet.svg.
  - pippy 13y ago
    Sorry, I updated my comment. I also should have mentioned Mono, but that's a different topic.
    - Pacabel 13y ago
      I don't think it's worth mentioning Mono. It's impressive what they've managed to accomplish, but it's nowhere near being a true replacement for .NET, especially for any serious system.
eterm 13y ago
Visual Studio now has Python support. I haven't yet tried it but it might be worth investigating.
- kevinskii 13y ago
  I've been using it regularly for a few weeks now. Granted I'm a novice a Python, but so far I've found it to be outstanding. It offers almost all of the VS functionality that you would expect if you were developing in .NET, and it's quite stable.
Tobani 13y ago
I have done a lot of Java, Scala, etc. IntelliJ & Eclipse are both wonderful IDEs in their own right. A lot of things like ReSharper were in those IDEs before Jetbrains (maker of IntelliJ) made the plugin for VS. After trying VS for a couple of projects I found it completely baffling and backwards. And I don't think this is because VS is bad, but because the way I approach software is completely different. I want to be able to compile things from the command-line first and use the IDE to edit the code. The way this happens makes it much harder to use other tools I like such as Jenkins. I can't ssh to a windows server. On the other hand I can see where somebody might be frustrated that they' can't remote desktop into a linux server or had to learn a new config language instead of having a GUI. IIS is another beast altogether. I've had to help customers set up their servers and the instructions are a set of screenshots that are hard to follow and easy to skip. Most apache/nginx configs clients can copy/paste fragments into their configs to get things working. I could have 1000's linux servers up by lunch, but it would probably take me all day to configure one windows server. You probably have a better solution for this, but I've not come across it. For me VS C# probably wouldn't be too bad if it didn't require running windows.
- sixothree 13y ago
  Most every command that can be done with a gui can be done via command line, mostly powershell; which you can use remotely. In fact I would be hard pressed to find any administration routine that cannot be done through command line and is not documented.
  - Tobani 13y ago
    The thing that I could use most is a way to automate setting up a reverse-proxy on a given path. I've figured out the steps to make it happen in the GUI. But that is tedious and error prone. Where would you suggest I go to find the best way to handle this?
    - sixothree 13y ago
      This may help. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790599.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790599.aspx
gisenberg 13y ago
I think it's less about not wanting to use Visual Studio and more about not wanting to have a Windows VM thrashing resources. I've worked with teams that have migrated to ServiceStack just to avoid running Windows. Assuming that running Windows is a non-issue, the parts that really, really bug me are: - Background operations suddenly become foreground operations that stall the IDE with a dialog saying "A background operation is taking too long." - Misclicks spinning off long background tasks that stall the IDE. - Automatic refactoring/code analysis that will stall the IDE. - Incredibly aggressive automatic reformatting. - The Microsoft Account agenda. VS2013 wants me to sign-in with my Microsoft account on so many different occasions: settings sync, Azure, Windows Developer account registration, auth refresh, etc... which wouldn't be so bad, but I'm signed in via Windows 8 already, adding insult to injury.
- jasallen 13y ago
  - Never had background to foreground stall IDE issue in VS2010 or up - Nor misclicks stall IDE - Nor automatic refactoring analysis stall IDE - Automatic reformatting is a once click option to disable and is not terribly aggressive in VS 2010 up. - wants you to. Not forces. So, by the way, do JetBrains, NetBeans, Oracle ...
  - gisenberg 13y ago
    Not running into those issues must be really great for you, but does very little to make the experience better for me. I tend to run VS under virtualization with TFS, which is far from a pleasant experience, even on modern hardware.
    - codelap 13y ago
      So on a local machine, in virtualization, you are running an IDE, SharePoint Server, SQL Server, IIS, TFS. If you aren't running it from a separate SSD drive then the problem has nothing to do with the IDE. You have an IO bottleneck.
      - 13y ago
plq 13y ago
Visual Studio's Python and Ruby plugins seem quite decent and free if you're on VS Pro and up. You don't necessarily need to let VS go if you're to migrate to a language supported on more than one platform.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  > Visual Studio's Python and Ruby plugins seem quite decent and free if you're on VS Pro and up. They're free, period. You don't need Visual Studio Pro -- you just need to install the isolated shell.
eddieroger 13y ago
Not so much hate for me, but apathy. For your one CMS, there are dozens based in Rails, Django, Node based ones I've not even heard of, and same for Go. For any of those, I just need Sublime and a server of my choosing. Furthermore, I can do dev on my box (a Mac) with very little spin up time. Contrast that to your scenario. First, I need Windows, which is fine for most, but not me. Then, my prod setup has to be Microsoft based. I've yet to find a $5/month IIS-based host with SQL Server (apathetically, I haven't looked much). Oh, and Visual Studio. I can probably get by with Express, but at some point I expect I'll find a wall that forces an upgrade. Microsoft has come a long way, but when I started years ago, I couldn't swing a Microsoft-based environment. VS was prohibitively expensive, and my parents' crappy computer couldn't run it. But I could learn PHP for free, run it locally through XAMPP, and be off to the races. Microsoft's never won me back, and your CMS is paying that price.
- chrislomax 13y ago
  The problem does ultimately lie with the tie in, I can appreciate that. I suppose my question was almost rhetorical as I know where the problems lie. I wanted to redevelop our CMS in MVC (we missed the MVC train by about 2 months so it's Web Forms) as I like how much more lightweight it is but to be honest, I would rather completely redevelop in another language as it would help our adoption rate with our clients. The painful thing is, I know how powerful our CMS is (to our clients at least) but it's such a hard sell. We normally deploy onto our own cluster BTW as we roll out core updates through our own servers so everyone feels the benefits of new modules and admin updates etc so the hosting is generally taken care of.
vlangber 13y ago
.Net is the most popular platform for commercial content management systems($2k->$100k license), with SiteCore, EpiServer, Kentico, Sitefinity and Ektron leading the pack. If you have problems selling due to the platform, I think the main issue is your target market, and not .Net in itself.

_random_ 13y ago

"open source language" - such as F# or Clojure? Both don't require you to abandon the best IDE on Earth. http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0e53eaf6-b031-4d12-84c1-9163db0b757e/view/Discussions http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0e53eaf6-b031-...

gabriel 13y ago
Whoa, didn't know about this. I'll check it out.
- profquail 13y ago
  For F#, check out http://fsharp.org/ http://fsharp.org/
  - cjfont 13y ago
    On the topic of searching, F# should have a Hoogle equivalent.

blibble 13y ago

I'd guess it's because a lot of techies remember how 10 years ago MS exploited their monopoly to force their products onto the entire world? fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again...

vowelless 13y ago
I was a kid back then so I don't know the details of the story. Can you give me a primer?
- jongalloway2 13y ago
  s/10/20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#Hist...
  - blibble 13y ago
    don't forget this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_compet...
    - tlarkworthy 13y ago
      also don't forget the gazillions of viruses in that era. Business networks paralysed by out of control worms on the internet. Good times.
    - us0r 13y ago
      don't forget to link to Google, Apple and EVERY other Fortune 500 company doing the same shit, different pile.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        They won't because this is HN and only Microsoft is bad.
zanny 13y ago
> fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again... Everyone I know for the most part types their documents in Microsoft Word on Windows computers. Sure, they got smartphones and tablets for the media consumption and facebook, but they don't even know an alternative "big boy" OS exists. They think Windows == computers. Which I think means MS is anything but irrelevant (no matter how hard I try to stuff opensuse down everyones throat).

Nate630 13y ago

I think people rarely take into consideration the cost of a project beyond the actual software. VS can save a lot of time – this extension is a good example.

pippy 13y ago

It's not .NET, .NET is a fantastic framework. The problem here is you're not just selling IIS and .NET, you're trying to sell the entire Microsoft ecosystem. There are so many MS components that just don't work on the Open Source world. Microsoft makes most of its money with its business products, so it's not cheap. Some companies just simply don't want to pay the Microsoft premium.

_random_ 13y ago
.NET is not a language. You always have to pay, but sometimes you pay directly and up-front.
curiousDog 13y ago
.NET is a framework. This is how the stack looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DotNet.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DotNet.svg.
- pippy 13y ago
  Sorry, I updated my comment. I also should have mentioned Mono, but that's a different topic.
  - Pacabel 13y ago
    I don't think it's worth mentioning Mono. It's impressive what they've managed to accomplish, but it's nowhere near being a true replacement for .NET, especially for any serious system.

eterm 13y ago

Visual Studio now has Python support. I haven't yet tried it but it might be worth investigating.

kevinskii 13y ago
I've been using it regularly for a few weeks now. Granted I'm a novice a Python, but so far I've found it to be outstanding. It offers almost all of the VS functionality that you would expect if you were developing in .NET, and it's quite stable.

Tobani 13y ago

I have done a lot of Java, Scala, etc. IntelliJ & Eclipse are both wonderful IDEs in their own right. A lot of things like ReSharper were in those IDEs before Jetbrains (maker of IntelliJ) made the plugin for VS. After trying VS for a couple of projects I found it completely baffling and backwards. And I don't think this is because VS is bad, but because the way I approach software is completely different. I want to be able to compile things from the command-line first and use the IDE to edit the code. The way this happens makes it much harder to use other tools I like such as Jenkins. I can't ssh to a windows server. On the other hand I can see where somebody might be frustrated that they' can't remote desktop into a linux server or had to learn a new config language instead of having a GUI. IIS is another beast altogether. I've had to help customers set up their servers and the instructions are a set of screenshots that are hard to follow and easy to skip. Most apache/nginx configs clients can copy/paste fragments into their configs to get things working. I could have 1000's linux servers up by lunch, but it would probably take me all day to configure one windows server. You probably have a better solution for this, but I've not come across it. For me VS C# probably wouldn't be too bad if it didn't require running windows.

sixothree 13y ago
Most every command that can be done with a gui can be done via command line, mostly powershell; which you can use remotely. In fact I would be hard pressed to find any administration routine that cannot be done through command line and is not documented.
- Tobani 13y ago
  The thing that I could use most is a way to automate setting up a reverse-proxy on a given path. I've figured out the steps to make it happen in the GUI. But that is tedious and error prone. Where would you suggest I go to find the best way to handle this?
  - sixothree 13y ago
    This may help. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790599.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790599.aspx

gisenberg 13y ago

I think it's less about not wanting to use Visual Studio and more about not wanting to have a Windows VM thrashing resources. I've worked with teams that have migrated to ServiceStack just to avoid running Windows. Assuming that running Windows is a non-issue, the parts that really, really bug me are: - Background operations suddenly become foreground operations that stall the IDE with a dialog saying "A background operation is taking too long." - Misclicks spinning off long background tasks that stall the IDE. - Automatic refactoring/code analysis that will stall the IDE. - Incredibly aggressive automatic reformatting. - The Microsoft Account agenda. VS2013 wants me to sign-in with my Microsoft account on so many different occasions: settings sync, Azure, Windows Developer account registration, auth refresh, etc... which wouldn't be so bad, but I'm signed in via Windows 8 already, adding insult to injury.

jasallen 13y ago
- Never had background to foreground stall IDE issue in VS2010 or up - Nor misclicks stall IDE - Nor automatic refactoring analysis stall IDE - Automatic reformatting is a once click option to disable and is not terribly aggressive in VS 2010 up. - wants you to. Not forces. So, by the way, do JetBrains, NetBeans, Oracle ...
- gisenberg 13y ago
  Not running into those issues must be really great for you, but does very little to make the experience better for me. I tend to run VS under virtualization with TFS, which is far from a pleasant experience, even on modern hardware.
  - codelap 13y ago
    So on a local machine, in virtualization, you are running an IDE, SharePoint Server, SQL Server, IIS, TFS. If you aren't running it from a separate SSD drive then the problem has nothing to do with the IDE. You have an IO bottleneck.
    - 13y ago

plq 13y ago

Visual Studio's Python and Ruby plugins seem quite decent and free if you're on VS Pro and up. You don't necessarily need to let VS go if you're to migrate to a language supported on more than one platform.

tanzam75 13y ago
> Visual Studio's Python and Ruby plugins seem quite decent and free if you're on VS Pro and up. They're free, period. You don't need Visual Studio Pro -- you just need to install the isolated shell.

eddieroger 13y ago

Not so much hate for me, but apathy. For your one CMS, there are dozens based in Rails, Django, Node based ones I've not even heard of, and same for Go. For any of those, I just need Sublime and a server of my choosing. Furthermore, I can do dev on my box (a Mac) with very little spin up time. Contrast that to your scenario. First, I need Windows, which is fine for most, but not me. Then, my prod setup has to be Microsoft based. I've yet to find a $5/month IIS-based host with SQL Server (apathetically, I haven't looked much). Oh, and Visual Studio. I can probably get by with Express, but at some point I expect I'll find a wall that forces an upgrade. Microsoft has come a long way, but when I started years ago, I couldn't swing a Microsoft-based environment. VS was prohibitively expensive, and my parents' crappy computer couldn't run it. But I could learn PHP for free, run it locally through XAMPP, and be off to the races. Microsoft's never won me back, and your CMS is paying that price.

chrislomax 13y ago
The problem does ultimately lie with the tie in, I can appreciate that. I suppose my question was almost rhetorical as I know where the problems lie. I wanted to redevelop our CMS in MVC (we missed the MVC train by about 2 months so it's Web Forms) as I like how much more lightweight it is but to be honest, I would rather completely redevelop in another language as it would help our adoption rate with our clients. The painful thing is, I know how powerful our CMS is (to our clients at least) but it's such a hard sell. We normally deploy onto our own cluster BTW as we roll out core updates through our own servers so everyone feels the benefits of new modules and admin updates etc so the hosting is generally taken care of.

vlangber 13y ago

.Net is the most popular platform for commercial content management systems($2k->$100k license), with SiteCore, EpiServer, Kentico, Sitefinity and Ektron leading the pack. If you have problems selling due to the platform, I think the main issue is your target market, and not .Net in itself.