
The .NET Framework is big. Really, really big. - iamelgringo
http://codebetter.com/blogs/patricksmacchia/archive/2008/03/18/number-of-types-in-the-net-framework.aspx
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hernan7
In fairness, the standard Java library, the Unix /usr/bin and Common Lisp are
not for the faint of heart either.

~~~
lst
As you mention Common Lisp:

The implementation I'm using is really small (and contains every single symbol
of the CL specs). And: as I'm doing real-world apps in CL, I'm often very
happy with some (little) more complexity to gain the required performance
needed.

Really, there is no _real_ waste in Common Lisp, although this seems not to be
a very popular opinion nowadays...

~~~
harshavr
which implementation is this?

~~~
lst
ECL.

From a pure Lisp perspective, it's maybe not the really very best choice, but
from an OS viewpoint, it's simply the most convenient for my tasks (Apple,
Windows, Linux, free, really fast inline C FFI).

Compressed its size can be as small as 1(!) MB on some OS.

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giardini
Microsoft wants to keep developers very busy learning _their_ terminology and
development tools so that there is no time to learn any other: e.g., W3C
terminology, Apache, PHP or cherry.py.

What better way than to rename everything that already exists in W3C and add
even more new terminology from the Microsoft's tools.

Learning to use Microsoft's tools with any degree of skill means that you
simply won't have time or memory to learn much else. Most developers won't
have sufficient time to learn even learn Microsoft's tools! The result: a
brain full of cryptic terminology that no one understands except another
unfortunate who made the same mistake.

And when Microsoft releases the "next generation", everything you know will
instantly be labelled as obsolete, inefficient and bug-ridden by Microsoft.
Not exactly a "career path."

Any developer considering studying .NET (or any other technology) should ask
himself: In the long run what is the most profitable action that I can do
next?

I venture that the answer is rarely "learn .NET". Even if the boss just
ordered you to learn .NET, the answer to the above question is more likely
"Send out my resume."

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nkohari
Nothing personal, but this is the biggest load of crap I've read for awhile.
It's just complete and total FUD.

Personal preferences aside, .NET is no different than any Java, Ruby/Rails, or
any other programming stack. Programmers typically gravitate towards one stack
or the other based on experience. Microsoft doesn't have any sort of "evil
plan" to fill your mind with .NET.

As for choosing a career path, while .NET isn't the trendiest stack, there are
definitely plenty of jobs to be had, just like with Java. It's true that if
you're interested in working for a startup, you might want to learn Python or
Ruby, but if you're interested in job security (which is what you're talking
about), you better stick with the "enterprisey" stacks like .NET or Java.

I'm a .NET developer, but I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft. Still, I can't
stand it when people claim that everything Microsoft does is some sort of evil
plan. No one is claiming that 37signals is trying to take over the world
because they promote the use of Rails.

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henning
The books are big, too. Scott Hanselman's latest ASP.NET book is 1700 pages.

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simplegeek
I wonder why on earth someone at Microsoft don't work on taking stuff away
from .NET platform. If someone at the company is already doing it I would
really love to know after-effects but it seems otherwise. On a side note,
Microsoft also seems to be disconnected from their _Gold_ partners & this is
horrible. I know a _Gold Partner_. They were rolling out their own MVC
framework & by the time they finished developing it Microsoft announced their
MVC framework :)

~~~
johns
Silverlight 2 contains a subset of the entire framework so we'll see how
popular that is as Silverlight grows.

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azsromej
I wonder successive releases make the Mono team cringe. Then again, despite
not supporting every new type from every namespace, you can write really rich
applications in Mono. There's always a core set of types that tend to dominate
your application.

