I would've loved to see a rough breakdown of how they got the the "5 figures" cost...
Visual Studio is $1200 a pop - this is for two people.
I'm already at 5 figures and I didn't include Expression/Media Encoder and so on.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx http://www.microsoftstore.com/s/visualstudio
1) It's expensive compared to other hosting platforms. 2) I hate lock-in to a particular platform. If we coded against Azure tables we would be locked in to Azure. If we used their SQL platform we would be space constrained. 3) I have used Azure and deployment, updates, and troubleshooting are all slow and cumbersome. It is still a very immature platform.
We've found that like for like the Azure platform is very well priced and is actually less expensive than our current Ubuntu setup, as well as being cheaper than comparable high level Microsoft hosting providers.
We don't much like lock in either and for the parts of the Azure platform that will lock us in we're extracting the code into a wrapper so we can replace with the minimum of work should we need to switch hosting platform in a hurry. Database wise we're going with SQL Azure and their 10GB limit I find to be quite spacious for our needs, although that would depend entirely on what you're storing. I believe they have 50GB databases in the works for the near future?
The deployment times are an issue and I have heard similar, but again I believe if you upload the project yourself then request the update the deployment time is greatly reduced making it less of an issue. It would take some doing to match Capistrano deployment though which is simply awesome and something I will certainly miss.
I actually used a powershell script to automate deployments on Azure, it was the delay from when you do that which is so frustrating. Waiting 5-10 minutes was fairly normal.
If you mix .NET code with significant OSS components (i.e. databases), you will incur a lot of extra setup work and hassle. There is less of a community and therefore you'll have to figure more stuff out on your own. If you're a .NET programmer for life, then this is great experience for you.
One of the traits of a good CTO is to access the community around a mix of technologies (i.e. C#/Sql Server, C#/MongoDb, or Ruby/MongoDb). If there's a good community around your technology stack, that'll streamline development a lot more. Things will just work. Many people will have already solved the problems you're bound to have.
I guess I like to think if my databases grow too large for the free version that's a good problem to have. It's not that bad a "time-bomb" to me. Many sites will never need the paid version - especially the ones small enough to be so cost sensitive.
MySQL is a pleasure to work with and so it MongoDB, more so than SQL Server.
If you prefer SQL Server than more power to you.
Anyway, I hope that articles and interviews like yours do make MS lower the price of SQL standard, but people shouldn't dismiss the MS platform based on cost when in many cases it could be almost free.
I do agree with that the SQL server licensing is a huge PITA and in your case you really didn't need all its ancillary features and instead just needed a simple, fast data store.
The article was a great read.
If you're developing on the MS stack, you simply need VS.NET and ReSharper or you'll be wasting hours of your life every week.
Otherwise, you'll be fighting against the grain. And the support community will be much smaller (i.e. .NET w/ OSS databases).
I agree about using the rest of the MS stack with .net but the DB component specifically is highly modular. Let's say you want to go for PostGre or Couch. Neither of those are part of the 'RoR stack' is it? How is is any less correct to use PostGre + .net rather than PostGre + RoR? Is the PostGre + .net community really that much smaller than the PostGre + RoR? I seriously doubt it.
Run MySQL on Windows and see how slow it is. The driver story is horrific.
My opinion comes from first-hand experience developing for a .NET-based startup. I have faced the issues that the two TekPub guys have. Although, switching away from .NET isn't an option for me. So, sometimes I need to integrate with OSS components. And the .NET examples/docs/community are often sorely lacking, and I have to figure out a lot on my own. I realized that it would be a lot easier to integrate if my employer was a PHP/Ruby/Python/Java shop.
Could you give me an example of the sorts of issues you've had? I've been using .net since 1.0 and we integrate with dozens of thirds party systems every year and database tools for .net are in my experience mature enough to not be an issue.
Small Business Server gives you all the backend stuff for more like $1000 per server. BizSpark/EmpowerISV/WhateverTheyCallItNextYear gives you all the dev tools and OS stuff essentially for free.
I can't imagine that anybody has EVER actually paid $7k per processor for a SQL Server license. We've been running it on our servers for years, properly licensed, and never even come close to that figure.
http://blog.wekeroad.com/2010/05/19/no-sql-in-the-wild#comme...
Microsoft comes out with new ISV programs about as often as new versions of Visual Studio. As long as you join the latest one every few years, you'll always have an up-to-date set of developer tools.
So all that's left is server costs, which as I mentioned above come to a little over $1k/box.
Windows Web Server: $400 SQL Server Express: Free (Databases have a 4 GB maximum size)
I can't image how it would cost them 5 figures to use asp.net mvc. I find the productivity of the MS development stack to be well worth the meager cost.
Take stackoverflow.com - a hugely successful site that I believe runs off 3 servers (originally 1). Jeff and Joel put this together on a pretty tight budget and I bet their site handles a bigger workload than the OP's site.
I think this is a bad article/interview because it gives the impression that you can't do websites in asp.net MVC on the cheap.
We budget around $10k per dev for tools and training per year. We usually come in a fair bit under, but given we spend over $200k/year per dev, this is a small fraction of their cost.
I think your point is that the tools weren't the right fit. Because if they were, it seems like baulking at $10k is a sign that you can't make the right cost-beneift tradeoff -- which is a very bad sign for a company.
Ask Jeff and Joel how much they're going to owe - I think it's almost to 6 figures :).
I think they made the point in the article that they could have overcome the obstacles of the ASP MVC platform, but why? They said they're more productive on Rails, they like working on it better, and it's cheaper.
What positive would there be (for them) of staying on the MS platform?