
London Stock Exchange Rejects .NET For Open Source - alexandros
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1742203/London-Stock-Exchange-Rejects-NET-For-Open-Source?from=rss
======
brc
I really think the headline should be: LSE dumps badly written system for
(hopefully) better written system.

While I'm sure .NET / Windows/ Sql Server will be the whipping boy, there are
high performance Windows based systems around. Bad programmers and architects
can make a hash of any technology stack. Microsoft just brought this one on
themselves by trumpeting the LSE connection far and wide, before seeing if it
actually worked.

~~~
mfairview
+1. Well said. They're joking themselves if they think Linux + Java is any
better. For systems where speed is of the essence and latency is intollerable,
a managed language will simply not do whether it's .net or java.

~~~
eru
Why? Are you afraid of automatic memory management? There are incremental
real-time garbace collectors available. And that should be preferable to space
leaks and seg-faults.

Or is there any other reason you advice against using a `managed language'?

~~~
nitrogen
Space leaks are still possible in a managed language if you forget to nullify
every reference to an old object, or if your garbage collector doesn't delete
objects that have a chain of circular references, and accessing a null
reference still gives a NullPointerException. GC is nice, and real-time
garbage collectors (such as rollendurchmesserzeitsammler) make managed
languages useful in more situations, but they don't entirely free the
programmer from thinking about memory management issues.

~~~
mfairview
With .Net there's also the issue with disposables of native resources. Also,
if you're call takes a bit of time to complete, even automatic objects could
get promoted up the generational chain unexpectedly. Take a look at the GC
with MSoft's Singularity OS (bartok compiler). Looks promising but much
farther down the road.

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rbanffy
Dumping .NET for Java seems like dumping a Buick to buy a Chevrolet.

They share a common set of flaws - both apparently tend to produce
overcomplicated designs and generally "enterprisey" solutions.

It would be much more interesting news if they went with Erlang, Scala,
Clojure on top of Hadoop or something like it ;-) but I bet no "enterprise
consultant" over there wants to bet the career on that.

Shame. I would give it a shot. Considering the productivity gap between a Java
(and C#) developer and one on any modern dynamic language, they could afford
to try 5 different approaches on 5 different technologies within the same
budget and have time to spare to benchmark each one to select the best
solution.

~~~
dtf
Forgive me if I missed something, but where exactly does it say they're
switching to Java? The slashdot blurb says they're "ditching .NET for
GNU/Linux" (which doesn't even make sense to me - it's kind of like saying
_we're ditching Python and re-implementing everything in FreeBSD_ ). The
linked press releases mention only a mixture of Solaris and Linux. It all
seems like a load of hot air - no technical details whatsoever. Frankly it
won't surprise me if they royally muck this one up too.

For an example of a trading platform project done right (with internal
development teams initially competing against each other), read about
BetFair's FlyWheel:
[http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb2007...](http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb20071116_426729.htm)

~~~
rbanffy
I am not sure how the "Java" meme entered this discussion, but it is based on
Linux and Oracle.

[http://www.millenniumit.com/capital_market_solutions/index.p...](http://www.millenniumit.com/capital_market_solutions/index.php)

And it seems the product is already in production use at other exchanges.

It could be so because they also list Sun as the first name in their useful
links (<http://www.millenniumit.com/useful_links/index.html>) page that is
conspicuously not in alphabetical order. They also list iPlanet, so, I
suppose, the list is not updated frequently.

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amix
This seems like a spin. They seem to be outsourcing this to Sri Lanka by
buying MillenniumIT, which is a Sri Lanka developer ("Compared to the bill of
$65 million for TradElect, MillenniumIT, a Sri Lankan developer, is a bargain
at $30 million." 1))

Is this Windows or .Net's fault? I really doubt it. .Net is a great platform
and offers performance similar to Java/C/C++. Will it help to switch the
platform to Java? Probably not, unless MillenniumIT are much better
programmers than developers from Accenture. Open-source does not prevent you
from making fatal mistakes or do bad code.

1)
[http://www.ibspublishing.com/index.cfm?section=news&acti...](http://www.ibspublishing.com/index.cfm?section=news&action=view&id=13440)

~~~
ks
MillenniumIT already has a high performance trading platform in use by other
stock exchanges

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ScottWhigham
I love how you can see the MSFT hatred in the voting for comments on this
submission. Looking at the comments, none of them are down-vote worthy yet
some fools just can't help themselves.

And yes, I'm fully aware that I will be down-voted to oblivion for this.

~~~
Daishiman
But you do know the reason why this situation is highlighted in because
Microsoft touted this as an example of the success of the .NET platform?
That's what we call a pretty hard fail.

~~~
jwhitlark
These links speak for themselves: MS Ad:
[http://tipotheday.com/2008/09/08/microsofts-foot-in-mouth-
lo...](http://tipotheday.com/2008/09/08/microsofts-foot-in-mouth-london-stock-
exchange/) MS Case Study:
[http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?...](http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=200042)

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kolleyk
This is simple. Accenture do not want a project to be simple and easy. They
make less money. It has to be as complicated and as buggy as possible to get
the consultants in. It's just a business plan, repeated again and again across
the UK. Nothing to do with the tech.

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known
Slashdot will have the best sarcastic comments ever
[http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1742203/London-
Stoc...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1742203/London-Stock-
Exchange-Rejects-NET-For-Open-Source)

------
StrawberryFrog
I've seen this one before. Dupe?

~~~
steveklabnik
The /. article even links to... a /. article! From July!

~~~
wglb
The july article told of their decision to go away from .net; this latest
article tells of the replacement that LSE purchased.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
The ill-informed commentary on /, and Hn (and on reddit somewhere) is the real
dupe.

