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Comment by technofiend | Hacker News Reader

I think this is just ticking a box for Microsoft since I believe you can get RH on AWS. But let's be honest - how many people will perceive any value in stacking a Microsoft technology (.NET) on top of UNIX? Sure if you already have a .NET app, hosting it in UNIX may give you some benefit. But is anyone really going to write an app from scratch with this in mind? I'm skeptical.

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With their release of CoreCLR[1], which combined with the class libraries, I think there is a lot of reason to look at .NET on UNIX. The implementation includes the same JIT and GC that the .NET framework uses, it just cuts out a bunch of bits that likely wouldn't be relevant to people developing server backends (WPF, AppDomains, etc.).

For server stuff, .NET is now close to the level of openness and compatibility that the OpenJDK enjoys. If you like C# or F# better than Java, there is plenty of reason to switch.

[1]: https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr

I think this is the same problem Google had with Motorola. Sure, Google was playing nice. But the OEMs are afraid how long Google would be playing nice until Google decide to favor it's own phone-making division? Same applies here. How long MS is going to play nice before they decide to favor their own platform. Needless to mention, MS's past history isn't going to help much either.

There is some risk that they'll take it back closed source since its MIT licensed (with patent grant) and their CLA[1] gives them a broad copyright license. However, I think with such a high-quality implementation being open source would be hard to put back in the bottle, especially since Mono is already integrating much of the code into their runtime[2]. On the other hand, external contributions to the Mono runtime are MIT licensed so that project could jump back to closed source if Xamarin so desires.

It's important to note that all of this applies to the OpenJDK too[3]. So you are at least no worse off if you make a leap from the JVM.

[1]: https://cla2.dotnetfoundation.org/cladoc/net-foundation-cont...

[2]: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/dotnet-integrati...

[3]: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oca-405177.pdf

edit: word choice

You may be right, I don't know. I suppose the acid test is when YC companies start posting for front-end developers with C#, .NET and UNIX experience versus what's required today, i.e. either node.js, django, ruby, etc.

Why YC companies? There are lots of other startups out there (some of which even using .NET).

Ah, great question. I sort of view the YC guys as cutting edge, i.e. willing and able to adopt new and sometimes still changing technology. In contrast to a Fortune 500 shop which in my humble opinion is unlikely to adopt a wholesale change to a new technology.

No, the acid test is if the big companies that have invested heavily into java start to adopt .net in meaningful ways.

Well, if they've got large existing Java codebases, I suspect the chance of the enterprise crowd investing in any new language is roughly zero.

The default RHEL on AWS is loaded with a bunch of a crap - supposedly Redhat officially supplies the distro, but one really has to wonder if a single week of engineering time has ever went into this. I mean seriously WiFi-drivers?!

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/review/product-reviews/re...

RHAT is a great business in terms of its stock price but I am not the fan I used to be.

I started w/ Slackware and moved to Red Hat and then Fedora but eventually RH and Fedora became "the Linux that couldn't" when I was installing on either an old or new machine. On the same machine Ubuntu would install just fine.

I run a Windows desktop now and mostly use Ubuntu Linux in AWS, sometimes inside a VM on my local machine. I used to run the RH-derived AWS Linux, but eventually I learned how to do things easily in Ubuntu, such as installing and maintaning an Oracle JVM, that are hard in Red Hat. Definitely an enthusiast could find a solution with RHEL, but having a server OS that "just works" is what you need if you are the guy who splits his time between devops and bizdev.

What would be the benefit of slowing the release process of RHEL on AWS by pruning it down to the bare essentials? Is redundant stuff like WiFi-drivers & firmware really taking that much space that it matters?

maybe, maybe not. What that tells me though, is that they didn't sit down and say: "Here's how we optimize this to work for the cloud". I can't say other distro's do either, but it seems like something they should do

I don't think they should. This way lies madness. You want e.g. the kernel & packages to be pruned down to only have the things needed for each cloud host?

That means that for N cloud hosts Red Hat would have to potentially build N different patches for any update or security fix.

Now you can't certify software to run on "RHEL 7" anymore, it has to be "RHEL 7, assuming it has XYZ, which some cloud hosts don't".

It can be done, but it's a huge hassle, it's much easier to just ship the same distro to everyone. Space is cheap.

> That means that for N cloud hosts Red Hat would have to potentially build N different patches for any update or security fix.

Why would they have to do that? AFAIK, patches apply to packages, not the entire distro. If $package_x isn't installed, it doesn't get the patch. If it is installed, it does get the patch.

And for me, the concern isn't space, as much as running processes, and littered un-needed files.

If you're concerned about either of those RHEL is not the distro for you. It has a bunch of running processes, some of them are even written in Python! Talk about unoptimal. Similarly it's not the smallest Linux distro by far.

I think this whole line of argument is just some misplaced nostalgia for distro micro-optimization. It's not the mid-90s anymore. Space and CPU is cheap, you're not going to gain anything significant by trimming down your distro.

If those things were actually important you wouldn't be using Azure in the first place.

I would, .NET and the latest C# is awesome and superior to other frameworks, so yes, the fact that can run in Linux is something very atractive.

C# is a decent language if you like imperative programing. .NET MVC, though, is far from impressive. The routing is crap, Razor is designed to encourage you to dump C# straight into your views, and in general it feels like a "let's do Rails in C#", which I really don't see as the future of web development.

C# and .Net the framework is objectively 'good'.

ASP.Net MVC, is very subjective. It definitely is very 'weird' from the perspective of being on a static language platform but embracing 'magic' over standard type safety.

I will give you routing though, i dont really think it 'sucks' but i have lead development teams using MVC for years... whenever a new developer who isnt familiar comes on board, the most significant 'learning curve' is the routing... i am not really a fan myself but i understand what the value proposition is...

But because it is .Net you have all sorts of libraries which bring you type safety if you want it. Things like T4MVC and Typelite combined with Entity Framework give me compile time impacts of impacts anywhere in my stack from the DB downwards. If you're writing projects measuring in the person-years of effort then these tools are vital, if you're writing something smaller then the "magic" is quite nice.

It's not a problem of learning curve, it's that when you come from something like Jersey, it feels very limited.

Jersey is a framework for REST services, the equivalent would be MS Web API, not ASP.NET MVC.

That's really a weird way of thinking about it. As something like Dropwizard demonstrates, it's a very good base for a web framework. Take Spring's routing, if you prefer, even that is better.

Why is weird? you do spect that Spring MVC gives you a full Restful experience?, it can give you a good REST experience, but is not for that, the same case with ASP.NET MVC is not spected to give a premier example is RESTFul services that is why Web API exists, and as someone who has used both, Java and .NET, I can tell you that Web API is simpler and as powerfull.

It's weird because there is no good reason to force you to use a different routing system in order to use REST routing. It's especially surprising considering how Rails-inspired it is otherwise.

Obviously you are misinformed, becuase ASP.NET MVC and Web API share the same Route Handler, heck, even I could make my own framework and use the same Route Handler, because it is a decoupled module, so, I invite you to learn more about the topic before making such ignorant statements.

I invite you to be more civil. As for .NET MVC, the fact remains that the default routing system is fairly mediocre, for no particular reason, while many other frameworks offer more flexibility with one system. Now, if it's good for you, by all means, keep using it.

>I invite you to be more civil

I can be civil till certaint point, but how to be more civil when you have no idea of what you are talking about and instead of admiting it you just keep making more ignorant statemens?, just say "I have no clue" and that's it, nobody is going to judge you.

>the fact remains that the default routing system is fairly mediocre, for no particular reason

You keep repeating the same as a broken record, yet, you have presented zero evidence, there is no route that I have implemented in Java that I wasn't able to replicate in the same way or even more easily in .NET, be it MVC or Web Api, so please, present some evidence or go home.

>C# is a decent language

Just decent? I dissagree, it is the best language to my taste.

>NET MVC, though, is far from impressive

Tell me what is impressive them, becuase to me is a well stablished, easy to use and learn with static typing, there is nothing better.

>The routing is crap

The routing is highly configurable, by default it mimics Ruby on Rails routing and if you don't like it you can use your own, you have no idea of what are you talking about.

>Razor is designed to encourage you to dump C# straight into your views

Just like in JSP pages you can write Java code, or in ERB pages you can write Ruby code or in EJS pages yu can write JavaScript code, and if you don't like there a re plenty of options.

>which I really don't see as the future of web development

Your personal views are just that, personal, at least inform your self well before making ignorant statements.

> Your personal views are just that, personal

As is yours, so why bicker?

C#/.NET is also my favourite, but it's not the be-all and end-all of web development. It might be the best for all of your projects, but not for everyone else.

It has it's flaws, like everything else, and I'm happy for you that you haven't used it (or anything else) for long enough to discover them.

Anyone is free to use the tool/framework of their preference, but not to make ignorant statements about other frameworks w/o even knowing them.

The points you are refuting are all subjective evaluations, not objective facts. If he were wrong on objective facts, then it would be reasonable, albeit impolite, to call him ignorant. But he isn't.

You don't need to use ASP.NET MVC (or even ASP.NET at all) when writing something for the web.

And if you like functional programming, use F#. It's pretty great.

This, I've recently been writing more Java lately and I miss C# quite a bit

With .NET being open sourced, they're probably hoping on a wider ecosystem developing around it.

> how many people will perceive any value in stacking a Microsoft technology (.NET) on top of UNIX?

That's not the point of this. MS is positioning Azure as the cloud for enterprise. Azure can run a bunch of hosted services you had to administer yourself (Active Directory, Office 365, etc.), it can run any Windows server apps you had, and now it can run enterprise Linux apps on the most popular enterprise Linux distro. So if you're a company that has Office, Active Directory and an Oracle database running on RHEL, you can move your everything into Azure.

The idea is not to run .NET on Red Hat. Its to run anything on top of Red Hat on Azure. Azure is far bigger than just Microsoft's stack.

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