

Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net? - maien

I am new to CS and I don't hear a lot of hackers use asp.net for their web app, aside from hosting costs(win servers), what other disadvantage does ASP.NET has?
======
bdfh42
There is nothing wrong with ASP.NET. The guys at Microsoft who write the
developer tools are second to none. The wide availability of excellent books
and the choice of languages makes this option well worth considering. The .NET
framework itself is great with all the functionality you might want.

The downside as I see it is what I call the "upgrade treadmill" imposed (I
assume) by the MS Marketing types - you will be pushed ever onwards once you
start down this road. My corporate customers seem happy with that and we have
built some great interactive web sites that scale well but it is a factor that
you might like to take into account.

------
gaius
Nothing is wrong with ASP.NET _if your problem is building websites the same
way you build Windows desktop apps_.

If not however, ASP.NET is simply the wrong tool.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I don't understand what your comment means. Elaborate?

~~~
gaius
ASP.NET is Windows Forms for the web. It uses the same approach as you'd use
to build a desktop app in Visual Studio. Which is good if that's what you want
to do (or if that's what your developers already know), but starting from
scratch, a natively web solution would be better.

------
jeremytliles
I think hosting cost is the biggest issue, especially if you reach a point
where you need to balance load across many servers. There is also the cost
ofthe development tools, although I think MS has some programs that allow you
to get Visual Studio .NET for free or for minimal cost. Other than that, I
think there is just a huge bias against the MS stack in the "hacker" (yes,
ironic quotes) community. Having worked with asp.net, django/python and rails,
I honestly don't see a huge difference between the three in terms of
development productivity, but there is definitely a difference in hosting and
software licensing costs. Because of that, I've lately been choosing not to
lock myself in to the MS stack for any projects that have the potential to
require massive scaling.

~~~
jamess
Not to mention that the average hacker is usually far better equipped to
manage a Unix flavoured server than a Windows server. With small companies who
can't afford to have a full time sysadmin on staff, what you know is a
powerful motivator. Windows server administration simply isn't the type of
thing you pick up while using Windows, while the basics of managing Unixen is
something you pick up while using Unix boxes.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I'm sorry but I don't see any difference in learning *nix admin vs Windows
admin. If anything I think it's the opposite: Windows admin is much, much
easier to learn. Where MS excelled early on was in usability and less-
training-required - that was kind of the whole point.

------
ScottWhigham
Reddit, YCombinator, Digg are all rife with anti-MS folks so, if you follow
the idea that, "The world must be like what my experience is" and you only
visit those sites (or similar ones), then you would absolutely get the
impression that ASP.NET is a bad choice. There are as many if not more
"hackers" using ASP.NET than all others except maybe php but those ASP.NET
folks typically hang out elsewhere.

------
babul
Why use it when you can use good, free, robust/reliable, open-source tools to
do the same things?

~~~
nreece
ASP.NET and the .NET Framework are free no less, and more reliable than
Windows itself. And the Mono project (.NET stack for Unix) is open source.

While ASP.NET in its out-of-the-box form may be a bit daunting at times, since
it follows nearly the same development model (viz event wireups, binded
controls etc) as with developing software apps. But ASP.NET MVC is an upcoming
alternate model that is quite flexible and more appealing for web development.

Having worked with MS tools for over a decade I can easily say that the .NET
IDE's have only gotten better, more usable and powerful, whether its Visual
Studio Express (free) or SharpDevelop (open source).

~~~
babul
The basic tools are free but why get locked into MS with all it all its
licensing, proprietary software/platform/toolset, upgrade, and cost issues.

MS does make some very good products (I use and like VS2008) but the core
reason most hackers don’t use them is because they don’t want these
aforementioned issues. This becomes more evident the more you scale.

It is no coincidence the top performing web-apps produced so far have not been
based on MS software.

------
bayareaguy
Unless you have a specific partnership or business model in mind that requires
it, I'd say ASP.NET's advantages are not sufficient to offset the disadvantage
of being coupled to Microsoft's decision process (both business and
technical).

------
icey
MS Tools & Languages are made with corporations in mind. In other words,
ASP.Net is structured so that programmers can be treated like replaceable
cogs. There really isn't anything wrong with that, but if you aren't in a
"replaceable cog" situation, you can get things done faster in other languages
that require less boilerplate code.

