There are no .NET Developers. | Hacker News Reader

There are no .NET Developers.

pseale.com

6 pointsphiggy8 comments

Ugh. I feel like I just read Ruby slash-fiction. I'm not even a .Net developer, and this is still too self-congratulatory to handle.

Takeaways:

1. How is Ruby crossing into the mainstream? It's been mainstream for quite some time. The fact that it's not the number one language does not mean that it's still some little niche language. Moreover, what does it matter if Ruby has crossed some arbitrary threshold into "mainstream"?

2. Ruby is not a "better platform". It's a different platform. Ruby and .Net each excel at some things. Some of those things overlap and some do not.

3. If you're not excited about .Net, then don't use it (unless you're being paid to). Rambling about how it's stagnating and playing catch-up (aren't those contradicting?) is pointless and shows a lack of historical understanding. How much effort was poured into Ruby to build the libraries and frameworks that were already available in Python, Perl, or (god help us) PHP?

4. People identify themselves as X-developers all the time. It's not a negative thing. Ruby developer, Java developer, .Net developer, C developer. Whatever. Single out ".Net developer" does nothing except demonstrate personal bias.

I think I need to add something to my post, because so many people are reacting badly to it.

If it helps, for context, read this article: http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/WhySilverlightIsTheFuture.aspx and then maybe my takeaways #1-4 will make better sense after you see what kind of opinions are normal in .NET land.

I think that other article is wrong, but it's pretty clear that it's addressing people who develop on and for Windows. It's not slamming other platforms as inferior. It's just hypothesizing about the future of development. I am not surprised when Windows developers talk about Microsoft technologies when they discuss the future, any more than I'm surprised when OSX developers talk about Apple when discussing the future.

Maybe your intent was not to openly hate .Net, but it's what you ended up doing. Your entire post was just comparing .Net to Ruby and saying that Ruby is better. It comes off as a bad sales pitch. Even in your update, you're still saying that .Net developers should try Rails. If you think that .Net developers are too isolated and close-minded, the solution is not to desperately pitch Ruby as some cure-all. There are a million ways to develop software that involve neither .Net nor Ruby, and you didn't mention any of them.

Thanks for the feedback, I think you've given better feedback than any of my blog commenters or blog-comment-via-new-blog-post responders.

You're welcome. And thanks for being much more civil than I probably deserved, considering that I started my comment with "Ugh" and went straight into a comparison with slash-fic. :)

On an unrelated note, your blog logo doesn't work for me. It shows up broken. Just FYI.

Hey everybody.

Please keep in mind that I work with a lot of people who still think Ruby is a toy language and Rails can't scale. This article was written for my audience, .NET developers who have heard of Rails but know almost nothing besides the name.

My goal with the post was to move people who identify as .NET developers, "because we work on the best platform", towards platform-agnosticism. Not to convert them from .NET zealots to Ruby zealots.

Based on how everyone (everyone) has reacted, I worded something badly/messed up the post.

Have a nice day everybody.

I think it is natural to want to self-identify as part of a community. I also don't think it's wrong to self-identify as part of more than one community.

Saying "I'm a .NET developer" or "I'm a Java developer" doesn't preclude one from simultaneously "I'm a Ruby/Rails/Python/whatever else" developer.

Call me when there are more (and better paid) Ruby jobs than .NET jobs.

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