
Say Hello to Windows Azure, The World’s Most Misunderstood Cloud - davidmr
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/microsoft-azure-java/
======
bergie
I've deployed some Node.js code on both Azure and Heroku, and I have to say
the Heroku experience is in many ways superior:

* Both seem to do Node quite well, supporting both web instances and workers

* Deployment to Azure can take 30 minutes. On Heroku we average 30 seconds

* App setup on Heroku uses environment variables and the simple Procfile. On Azure you need to deal with poorly-documented XML files (most documentation deals with how to generate those with wizards in Visual Studio)

* Heroku's toolbelt works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. With Azure you have to use Visual Studio or Windows Powershell

* Azure provides some useful services like table storage and message queue. But Heroku has a much wider array of nicely-working add-ons to choose from, many of these things you could run on your own servers as well, like Redis or Postgres

* Last time I checked, Azure was quite expensive. This may have changed with their recent pricing cuts

* On the plus side, Azure lets you choose where to run your app geographically (USA, Europe, Asia?)

Compare:

[http://universalruntime.tumblr.com/post/14303346830/running-...](http://universalruntime.tumblr.com/post/14303346830/running-
coffeescript-on-microsoft-azure)

<https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs>

------
latch
Microsoft's problem is sycophants. There are enough people telling them how
great their products are, that when those same products don't do well,
Microsoft looks outwardly for the problem.

Windows Phone must be great, a lot of reviewers said so. Poor sales?
Perception and marketing! (Forget lack of leadership, vision and innovation)

Azure is shunned? That's because people misunderstand it. Nothing to do with
being slow out the gate, falling farther behind with each new AWS product, and
not having any price advantage (in some cases, it's far worse).

Bing losing money? That's just not fair, our results are as good as google.
(NO THEY ARE NOT).

These sycophants are both internal to the company and external.

The sooner Microsoft realizes that it's failing to succeed in new markets
because it's average-at-best, the better for them. As long as they keep
believing that their failing products are great and thus the failure is
[largely] outside of their control, nothing will change.

~~~
cooldeal
>Windows Phone must be great, a lot of reviewers said so. Poor sales?
Perception and marketing! (Forget lack of leadership, vision and innovation)

There is no reason for both of them to be problems.

You mean like how when you go looking for Windows Phone the salesman almost
always pushes you hard towards other phones? There are too many instances of
this to ignore.

Meanwhile, in multiple third party independent surveys, Windows Phone
continues to do well:

[http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-phone-tops-in-user-
satisf...](http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-phone-tops-in-user-satisfaction)

[http://socialtimes.com/windows-phone-bests-android-in-
user-s...](http://socialtimes.com/windows-phone-bests-android-in-user-
satisfaction-according-to-changewave_b70939)

[http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/03/28/revealing-user-
survey...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/03/28/revealing-user-survey-
proves-windows-phone-a-worthy-adversary-for-iphone-if-only-it-had-the-apps/)

For years we have heard the talk-ers proclaim how the .NET stack doesn't scale
is too expensive for a startup. Meanwhile the do-ers built Stackoverflow and
it has none of the scaling problems that sites built on other tools like
Reddit have.

The perception problem is real and for you to totally ignore it shows your own
biases.

~~~
latch
Windows Phone isn't selling because it came out 4 years after the iPhone. It's
an absolutely failure at the leadership level. They ridiculed the iPhone when
it came out. What's the leadership going to say "We really dropped the ball on
this one"? Ya right...blame anyone else.

I'm not arguing that Windows Phone isn't better (nor am I arguing that it is).
I'm arguing that the reason it isn't selling is 100% internal to Microsoft and
isn't merely a marketing and perception problem.

~~~
recoiledsnake
You're talking about public statements. Of course, any company ridicules
competitors' strategies. Where are statments from Apple heaping praise on the
Kinect?

------
ImprovedSilence
This piece reads like it was written by a Microsoft PR person, and not a
investigative journalistic piece in Wired. After reading this[1] I can't help
but be extremely critical of articles written this way. (or most magazine
articles these days)

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

------
andywood
_"I can code in somewhere between 60 and 80 languages, and I can assure you
there is nothing like C#."_

Um, really? I can just barely _name_ 35 languages, even including esoteric
ones like Brainf*ck and Shakespeare.

~~~
untog
That does seem a little hyperbolic. Shame, because the original statement is
very valid- C#/.NET is looked down upon in Silicon Valley, but rarely for
valid reasons. It's just not "cool".

~~~
latch
People look down on it because:

1 - Most people want to run OSS...specifically Linux so they can leverage all
the tools that run better on (or only run on) Linux. Like memcached, varnish,
redis...Running .NET on Linux is silly.

2 - Want a dynamic language because it's more productive.

It isn't because it's "not cool". It's because general purpose languages are a
dime a dozen, and there's no reason not to pick the best one possible. The
only advantage .NET has is if you are doing work that integrates with other MS
products.

~~~
mikeash
What's silly about running .NET on Linux? If C# is a decent language on its
own, and Mono is a decent way to run it (neither of which I'm completely sure
of, but I _think_ that's the case) then it seems like it could be a fine
choice.

~~~
rbanffy
> and Mono is a decent way to run it

I had consistently better performance running the same (CPU-bound, little IO)
program on Windows Server than running it on Mono/Linux. I did that in 2005,
so, YMMV.

Why would you pick C# over, say, Objective-C, Go or Java if you intend to run
your software on Linux?

~~~
mikeash
I imagine things have changed in seven years, although I won't say that Linux
would win.

C# is definitely better than Java as a language. It's arguably better than
Objective-C (whose main advantage is ease of talking to C APIs), and I have no
idea about Go but I imagine there are probably decent reasons to prefer C#
over it at least in some cases.

~~~
rbanffy
There is another point to be made: with the enormously rich language ecosystem
that runs so well on the Linux platform, why limit oneself to the subset that
runs well on Windows?

~~~
mikeash
Sure. I'm just saying that _if_ C# is actually a better language than the
alternatives (and it does seem pretty good, but I'm not _that_ familiar with
it) and _if_ C# integrates with Linux as well as the rest, then it would be a
decent, not-silly choice. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why you'd
choose something else instead though. But I don't think it's necessarily silly
to choose C# on Linux purely on the merits of the language, nothing to do with
Windows.

~~~
rbanffy
I don't think Linux integration is that good - Ubuntu just released a Mono-
free OS release (you can install it, if you want, but it doesn't come
installed by default) - and I wouldn't bet on it getting better.

I'm kind of curious about languages such as Vala and Go and how they compare
to C# and Java.

------
elsurudo
“People say, ‘Oh, I’ll have to teach you about Java sometime, so then you’ll
know the bright side.’”

Did this strike anyone else as something _nobody ever_ would say? I think it's
pretty much consensus that C# is basically the next-generation of Java.

As for Rails, Python, etc. being the most common tools in SV, I tend to this
it might be because they are free. The thing is (in my experience) MS dev
tools are usually very good, and probably don't cost nearly as much as most
people think they would. However, entrepreneurial folks are just more likely
to start with something free, and then when the time comes to get more serious
about their startup, it just makes sense to keep running with what you know.

~~~
JackC
_As for Rails, Python, etc. being the most common tools in SV, I tend to this
it might be because they are free._

I don't want to go all Richard Stallman on you, but I think it might also be
because they are Free. I mean, I've never bothered looking into MS dev tools
because I assume they'll only run well on Windows, and they'll be designed for
a server stack that will only run well on Windows, and then I'll be tied to
getting my dev tools and server stack from one company on one OS, and it will
be _Microsoft_.

It happens that I like developing on a Mac with a Python IDE right now, so I
freely admit that I'm both biased and ignorant. But I do know, _know_ , that
if a year or two down the line Apple gets too controlling, I can switch to
Windows or Linux and keep using my same stack with tools that are just as
good. And if Guido decides to become Tyrannical Dictator for Life and screw up
Python, he'll have no real power to do that because the community can do
exactly what they're doing without him. Are those things true about MS dev
tools?

------
mibbitier
It's very very hard to take a company seriously that persistently have
ridiculously lame bugs in their code and systems.

For example Windows Azure suffered outages in February because the programmers
did not anticipate a leap year happening.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/02/29/microsoft-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/02/29/microsoft-
windows-azure-cloud-service-suffers-big-outage/)

~~~
mattmanser
Jeezus, don't be so melodramatic and selective, everyone creates bugs.

Remember when android would lose text messages? Or Amazon's supposedly
redundant system went down all at once?

Don't point a finger at MS for what wasn't even a complete outage.

And not taking the biggest and most successful software company in the world
seriously makes you look like a complete fanboi tool.

~~~
mibbitier
McDonalds are the biggest and most successful restaurant in the world. But I
doubt any chef would describe their food as being fantastic.

When I want to eat a really nice meal with friends or family, I rule out
McDonalds. Does this make me a "fanboi tool"?

Microsoft have a pretty long history of date related bugs in their software
and products stretching back years. They do not seem to understand how leap
years work.

Windows 98: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/150947.stm> Zune:
<http://bit-player.org/2009/the-zune-bug> Excel: "Excel 2000 incorrectly
assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year" Exchange 2007:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/04/microsoft_admits_to_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/04/microsoft_admits_to_exchange_leap_year_bug/)

etc etc

~~~
jamesYC2011
Yes, yes; this obviously makes Microsoft irrelevant _roll eyes_

Some of you need to be treated for Microsoft Derangement Syndrome.

~~~
mibbitier
It makes them as relevant as McDonalds is, when I'm considering where to go to
get some good food.

------
rbn
I got into Microsoft Bizspark and it came with Free azure hosting. So far so
good. Coming from heroku with a Django app, It was a bit tough at the start
but when you get the hang of everything, it does it's job.

~~~
outside1234
is it better or just cheaper? (seriously, I'm interested in your opinion) did
you switch for costs only or are there benefits to Azure as well?

~~~
rbn
I can't really compare it to Heroku. You have to compare it with EC2. First
thing. They are planning to roll out Linux hosting but as of right now it's
only windows and I have never used Windows EC2. With Azure you actually get a
Windows machine in a datacenter that you choose. You can Remote desktop into
it and control it, like you can control your local computer. Deployment is
kinda tricky. But it's important to get Remote desktop working first so you
can see what's happening in the system. It's not like heroku how you can do
Heroku --logs. It's very important to remember that with Azure. You have to do
everything. Heroku makes deploying, logging very simple for you. But at the
same time you have less control. To sum up. There is a steep learning curve
coming from heroku. But overall, I think it's was worth it.

This is what you get with Bizspark: <http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/azure/>

------
yalogin
“In this echo chamber which is the [San Francisco] Bay Area, unless you follow
what everyone else does, then there’s an assumption that you don’t know what
you’re doing,”

How true is this?

~~~
BobertK
I am considering a move to SV and this quote left me w the same question. How
about it guys?

My perception so far is - It is quite possibly true, and I have noticed a
strong anti-MS bias. I like and use Ruby\Rails but I have developed in .NET,
and Visual Studio, C# are quality tools. VB.net is totally maligned but quite
good: very English syntax w/o managing all the damn brackets.

I switched to open source because I hope to have a lot of users, thus a lot of
servers. My feeling is the MS space is excellent for B to B, or internal
intranet stuff, where the tight integration w Windows et al is useful and the
licensing costs are moderate because of the low volume of users.

------
georgeshank
You can't deploy to Azure without windows.

Cloud9 ide allows you to deploy from their platform to Azure but it was a
headache getting anything working.

~~~
JamesNK
Sure you can. The Azure website's control panel has a package upload dialog
box. As long as it is a valid Azure package it doesn't matter where you upload
from.

------
outside1234
Does anyone here have actual experience to share on using Azure that has also
used AWS? I'm building a node.js app and by default I'd use AWS but should I
consider Azure?

~~~
bergie
Azure's Node.js experience feels a lot closer to a PaaS like Heroku than that
of AWS. And for that experience, see my Azure-Heroku comparisons in this
thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3899159>

------
architgupta
Appharbor is awesome for .NET (as an alternative to Azure).

The article does ring true that valley based consumer startups run on
Python/Ruby more often.

(I am really not sure about the "enterprise" ones.)

------
code_duck
So, someone who loves C# loves Windows Azure. I'm not surprised and as noted
by many other posters, this article hardly has a genuine ring to it. Nice try
Microsoft.

------
moron
I like C# and a lot of my career has been .NET work, but I detest this
sanctimonious attitude .NET devs cop sometimes, like they're being
iconoclastic or rebellious for using the MS stack. Like everyone who doesn't
do what they're doing is engaging in groupthink or trying to be "cool".
Believe it or not, people actually have good reasons for not using MS
software!

