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Ask HN: Bay Area .Net Devs - Stigma on .Net

4 points by dannyr ↗ HN
I had a conversation with a technical recruiter today. She told me that there is a stigma on .Net among startups. Maybe it's just Microsoft in general.

I hear this a lot too when I get to meet other hackers. Somebody actually told me that there is no reason for .Net to exist.

My experience is here is that .Net jobs are hard to find in the Bay area compared to other cities. I'm lucky to have one right now.

Because of this, I have been coding in Python and Django for the past 6 months to at least broaden my options when I have to go back to the job market again.

Do other .Net developers have the same experience like I do?

6 comments

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sarvesh
.Net isn't the most terrible framework but it comes with a lot of baggage and some technical problems that would deter startups from using it.

On the web development side ASP.Net is really hard compared to other frameworks out there. Until ASP.Net MVC, there wasn't a quick and easy method to implement URL rewriting for example. On the ORM side they seem to be changing their mind every year they ditched Linq to SQL in favor Entity Framework which really doesn't work as seamlessly as they make it out to be. Add to this the fact the startup has to buy licenses for the server, the costs add up as you scale up. I know there is Mono but there it isn't easy to port everything to it, the implementation isn't exactly complete.

.Net has its place for example if you are writing a Windows only desktop application .Net is by far the easiest framework MS had to support it. I believe Xobini uses .Net. Again writing cross platform desktop applications doesn't look as appealing to me. Silverlight 3 is almost here but it still yet to get font rendering and printing right.

ScottWhigham
What "baggage" does .NET come with specifically other than being from MSFT? And I don't know what "technical problems" .NET, the framework, has. That opening sentence is just so vague and full of very strong statements yet there is absolutely no defense of those statements. I'm no MS apologist but the guy's asking for reasons why there's a .NET stigma and the first sentence in your response is just hyperbole IMO.
makecheck
I think you're better off with the portable skill set. It introduces you to the non-Microsoft way of doing things, which in my experience is usually for the best.

What are some examples of unique/better/amazing things that .NET does? And what could make it worth requiring Windows to use?

If it's just yet-another-way-to-do-X, and Windows-only "for no good reason" (and Mono doesn't count), then you have your answer. Money is tight, especially in a startup; if I am to invest in Windows, it had better be to enable some outstanding technology that will genuinely give me a leg up on the competition.

ScottWhigham
Wait - you answered a different question, didn't you? The question you answered seems to be, "Should I just learn .NET or should I learn more stuff along with it?"
felixmar
I don't live in the Bay area, but i think Microsoft's problem concerning startups is that they haven't created many exciting platforms for some time. Take for example the activity around iPhone and Android. Apple creates more roadblocks for developers than Microsoft ever did and Java is not the most interesting language to program in. But both platforms are attractive so developers keep developing new applications for them.
peripatetic
I work for a startup in sv. successful. we are all linux, python, ruby. we are building our infrastructure from the bottom up, (no previous decisions we are locked into). The idea of doing _anything_ with microsoft is just completely alien... its like another world that is just not relevant to us. could you imagine if we were discussing a new service and one of our engineers said "lets buy a win server 2008 license and an IIS license and check that out" ha. lol. "and if we have any questions we'll just pull up some stuff on the microsoft knowledge center or msdevnet to figure out how to use it." LOL!!

(feeling is similar towards java, but java people are seen as more redeemable. but if you worked on java at HP, you are pretty much lost to us.)