
@BrandonWatson Is Listening - AndrewWarner
http://www.manyniches.com/developers/brandonwatson-is-listening/
======
generalk
I don't use .NET because -- honestly -- I'm not quite sure what .NET means.

Does it mean the Visual Studio IDE and tools? I'm not a fan of those. They're
good at what they do, but I prefer tools like TextMate, Emacs, or Vim.

Does it mean VB.NET or C#, the two languages I immediately associate with the
term .NET? Does it mean the CLR and any/all languages built on it? Either way,
I'm a web developer, and it takes me all of two seconds to do:

    
    
        rails -d mysql project_name
        script/server
    

and setting _that_ up took about fifteen minutes of compiling and installing
things for free. I could switch to IronRuby, but I don't see the upside.

Does it mean the ASP.NET web stack? I (and my company) deploy to *nix servers,
and switching to Windows servers isn't in the cards.

The biggest problem, in my case, is I don't care about .NET -- the term to me
implies "the Microsoft way", a catchall term for using MS technologies, which
I'm not interested in. I can become interested in an IDE that runs on my
platform of choice, and I can become interested in a language runtime that's
faster than, say, MRI; but only if these things don't also imply switching to
an all-MS stack.

(edit: formatting)

~~~
callmeed
I wish I could upvote this 10x. I have no idea what .NET means today other
than the little insight I get when listening to the Stack Overflow podcast
(which isn't much).

Not only do I not know what .NET means, I wouldn't know where to start
learning or what the requirements are ...

Where is the .NET equivalent of these types of resources? (I really want to
know):

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-
ruby-...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/1/6/ubuntu-intrepid-ruby-on-
rails)

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-
mo...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/9/3/ubuntu-hardy-using-mod_wsgi-to-
serve-your-application)

<http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts>

<http://railscasts.com/>

<http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/>

Furthermore:

\- Can I spin up a $20/month .NET-compatible VPS?

\- Can I easily tie my .NET apps into cloud services like S3 (I can tie S3
file attachment into my Rails models in minutes)?

I don't ask these questions to be flippant–I honestly don't know the answer
because I never bothered to search it out.

~~~
BrandonWatson
Awesome, awesome, awesome feedback. I share your frustration and am working
like made to get that religion into our core business.

What some fun: type the following query into bing.com: "Getting Started with
.NET" - check where the links take you. Try the same thing with PHP, Erlang,
Ruby on Rails, etc.

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MichaelApproved
Frameworks, popular open source programs and prebuilt social api code.

.Net is great for building things from the ground and enterprise setups but
when it comes to hooking into any social site MS just doesn't stack up. Even
their sponsored Facebook framework was abandoned. They invested hundreds of
millions into Facebook but couldn't keep the simple framework up-to-date for
their developers.

No kid is going to say "Hey, I'd love to build an enterprise level reporting
program with .net" Instead they're going to want to build cool plug-ins for
popular open source programs. The next generation of programmers are growing
up on PHP.

~~~
BrandonWatson
You mention the Facebook code library. What else could we do for you and this
community?

As for the "cool plug-ins" bit, what is driving that decision, in your
opinion? Desire for notoriety?

~~~
tdonia
Desire for experience. while there are those developers brazen enough to think
their first project will change the world, personally i knew my jr. high
coding skills weren't exactly enterprise level. i was more interested in
playing with different platforms and exploring their limits / figuring out
what works. back then i was playing with ASP (haneng & 4guysfromrolla
tutorials) and PHP. ASP seemed more expensive (have to pay for a windows
server) and there weren't nearly as many places i could use the code (unless i
wanted to do something with a DSN or ActiveX / some other piece of windows
infrastructure a kid has little incentive to learn) so eventually i stopped
paying attention of ASP. now, years later, seeing what the .NET professional
developers at my office fill their days with - i'm glad i didn't learn more of
it, lest i'd be doing what they do. no sane person should ever be confronted
with DotNetNuke.

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BrandonWatson
Just to kick off the discussion here, if you are a developer who is building
on a platform other than .NET, I would love to know why. Tell me anything. I'm
an entrepreneur on loan to MSFT and very much trying to build our outreach to
the non-MSFT developer crowd, and listen to and learn about their needs so we
can build better products.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I'm an MSFT coder and love the mission you're on. We need more coders working
with .net or the language will die off.

~~~
BrandonWatson
It drives me nuts that I have to download Eclipse to write Python code
(instead of using Visual Studio). I am on a mission, and my execs have made it
clear to me that they are willing to invest in what I am doing, which is
awesome. Phase one, start building some trust with the community, and that
starts with listening to them. Since I am in the product group (and not our
evangelism group), I have direct product and strategy responsibilty. It's a
cool role, and I am looking forward to spending more time doing what I love,
which is working with devs and hopefully finding ways to make them more
productive.

~~~
Tichy
Isn't there a Python.net or something? Is your gripe that Python should be
supported by Visual Studio?

Why did nobody write a Python plugin for VS yet? I suppose if you believe in
it, you could do it in your spare time, or the 20% time (I know that's Google,
but surely Microsoft has copied that model?).

I think a lot of people who use Python don't even like "fat" IDEs like VS,
though.

~~~
BrandonWatson
Yes, we have IronPython (and IronRuby), and no it's not supported in VS. Don't
get me started... =)

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Keyframe
\-- honestly -- I don't use .NET because:

* I am cheap, there are free stuff that are excellent and free

* I don't trust Windows as a server environment - 1) because of inherited public perception of it 2) lack of experience

* I have a perception of mono as poor .NET clone

most probable reason is no. 1

