Phil Haack quit Microsoft for GitHub
haacked.com
haacked.com
- MS Lead on ASP.net MVC framework vers. 1 through 3 (current)
- Lead on the NuGet package manager framework for Visual Studio
- This Developer's Life Podcast with Scott Hanselman
But alas he sought pastures greener and I am happy for him. My dabbling in git from my windows machine hasn't been smooth to say the least. Hopefully Haack's new role will remedy that, and for that I will fund further research into male pregnancy.
Anders Hejlsberg is credited as being the principal designer & architect of C# at Microsoft [0] and I don't see this listed on Phil Haacks resume. [1]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg#At_Microsoft
The whole 'wacky french house' thing has been done better.
http://soundcloud.com/para-one/canblaster-clockworks-para-on...
It rhymes with "Mohawk". "Faux" is the French word for fake, pronounced like "fow". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux
Except using a French word in the context is pretentious and phoney. Maybe there's a word for that...
It was more the ugly portmanteau (phoney!) itself which I objected to.
EDIT: although I see now that I did manage to misspell it. How embarrassing.
I used to admire Haack aswell. He's a great guy. However I fell out of love with .net.
I am a polyglot programmer, with strong background in .net. To understand these Haack's "accomplishments", please look at history (google). There is nothing genious about MVC3, towards other MVC web frameworks, and its 'advanced' 3 version, it sucks really bad in testing. (I'm also an author of a .net web framework that pits against it pretty well in this regard).
* MVC - monorail -> rails. * NuGet - nupak - nu -> really rubygems. * podcast - well, whatever.
I wouldn't like to fall out of love with Github.
And then maybe this whole us versus them thing will stop.
There is nothing genious about MVC3
Being a great guy as he is, I'm sure he'll push to positive in anything he'd do!.
It's great to see an open source community, that isn't engulfed in the sanfrancisco linux/mac mono culture bubble, reaching out to Win developers for the benfit of everyone.
I totally see where you're coming from, and I personally think hg is great. I just don't want your comment to scare windows developers off. For the record: running git on windows is great.
I gave Git another shot when Bitbucket started to support it (I won't use GitHub, as it happens), but it didn't shake out for the above reasons. I like being able to open stuff up on any of my machines and the lack of care I perceive in Git on Windows drives me to stay with hg a lot more than it would otherwise.
my experience with git GUIs in general (regardless of the OS) is that you should just give up and use the CLI.
My experience with source control systems--you know, including ones that aren't git--is that you can generally find a good UI for them. SourceTree on Mac is great for hg and git. Tower is great for git, too. Even TortoiseHg is a country mile past TortoiseGit in usefulness.
Honestly, when I wasted time (and it really was a waste) using Cygwin or similar stuff, I just ran sshd and SSH'd to myself from Penguinet.
I always thought it was cool that Mercurial is written in Python, part of that cross platform magic.
msysgit works great, has for years. The install is simple enough a non-technical person can do it. I've used git on projects with non-technical people checking in from the command line. It is pretty surprising to see a PM have an easier time than a dev only because they don't have years of UI driven source control working against them. Using source control from the command line... well that is the trick. Though I haven't met many great developers who cannot.
Also, git extensions is pretty good (better than tortoise). I usually install it because viewing the history from the IDE is a nice way to keep your flow going. You can do some creative things searching through the logs as well.
From the cmd.exe prompt, some of them are still working, as long as the cygwin bin folder is in the PATH variable, and the executables end with .exe, and are not cygwin symlinks (the file would be very small and contain something like !<symlink ...>) - then they won't execute, but you can still execute them from cmd.exe, like this:
sh -c "gitk --all"
Hopefully git is still normal executable (gcc is not, for that: sh -c "gcc --help"
C:> gcc --help
Access is denied.
C:> sh -c "gcc --help"
... Help displayed
* semi-evil. * quasi-evil. * margarine of evil. * Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.
But I'm sure he'll do well with it.
The last startup where I was CTO was largely based on the Microsoft .NET stack and we loved almost every ounce of it as a technology. Until, of course, we tried to hire startup and open-source minded engineers in the Microsoft-hate land of Silicon Valley. That's practically impossible.
StackOverflow and (hopefully) now Github will ideally do a lot of good in the next few years to break the stigma against C#.
It seems like the C# community at large contains Enterprise-oriented folks, who only like to consume open source and not give back. They just want to get their projects done and make a profit. I wish we could see more altruistic entities and startups embrace the technology. @haacked - fix it! Github seems like an ideal platform for change in this regard.
Oh, yeah, that startup was acquired and they threw away all our back end tech for no other reason than it was Microsoft based. It's not all bad, though, I do love my shiny Macbook Pro. ;)
Feature requests: - CodePlex migration tool (I have a project there...) - Github client for Windows - Github VS integration
Microsoft needs to become more outwardly focused and influential softies leaving the fold and pushing from the outside will do that. Right now the two good things Microsoft has going for it is MVC and C#. Both of which were inspired or heavily influenced by outside forces (MVC by Castle and C# 4 was influenced heavily by Python).
Phil Haack moving to Github will hopefully push Microsoft to embrace open collaboration systems a little better and because he's outside of Microsoft he won't have to deal with "you might kill off VS Team Foundation" hindrances.
All this in turn MIGHT give Microsoft a chance at becoming relevant again in the developer space (and please don't say "a lot of people use Microsoft" because I'm one of those people and I know a lot of those people and they're all looking at their future with worried eyes)
If you read the blog post of this very submission, it cites C# as #4 and climbing on the TIOBE language index. I know and work with a bunch of .NET developers, also, and I can't name one that's looking at the future with worried eyes.
In what way are they irrelevant in the developer space?
In my particular case, I tend to shy away from Microsoft development because the stack isn't really free, top to bottom and it seemed like MS was following trends instead of leading them (MVC was an obvious response and I see a lot of Railisms in it).
The issue with Microsoft right now is they seem to want to throw away everything they've created over the last decade and embrace the web in a desperate attempt to bring new developers in.
For example, if you watch the Build sessions you see a lot of focus on C++ where as Microsoft used to treat C# like it's preferred language. That's got a lot of people thinking Microsoft's looking to sideline C# in the same way they did VB 10 years ago.
Visual Basic was obviously more popular that C# at that time (being C# hadn't existed before that). So the Tiobe index doesn't mean much (and honestly I'm always dubious of Tiobe in that I don't think PHP is more popular than Ruby and Python combined in modern development)
3 years ago Microsoft was telling developers to use ASP.NET Web Forms, WPF, and Silverlight. Today all that is essentially looked on as bad practice. So yes, there are people in the MS Developer community who are nervous.
Microsoft isn't really "throwing everything away", they're shifting product strategies in a rather confusing and convoluted way. However, the latest stuff their pitching is C# and stuff from Silverlight (even though it's "dead") -- it's largely the same technologies. A Silverlight or WPF programmer will find a relatively painless transition to WP7 (which is essentially WPF/Silverlight) or W8 Metro apps.
I think your idea that C# is being de-emphasized or going away is a very, very incorrect statement contrary to reality.
Lately the development in .NET revolves mostly around Sharepoint (customizing), cloud deployment, and probably Dynamics AX/GP/CRM.
The era of Microsoft shops building independent products seem to slowly/gradually being phased out by the web-app shops (the SaaS type). Lately the trend for MS shops are largely around "toolkits" companies such as Telerik, DevForce, and Infragistics or the "webparts" (SharePoint) companies like Bamboo Solutions. That's pretty much it...
There might be a bunch of "worried" .NET developers that don't want to work on Sharepoint customizations. But I'm pretty sure there are plenty consultants that won't mind doing that kind of works.
But again, this is just my personal point of view.
Right now the two good things Microsoft developer tools has going for it are those.
Let's not forget products that make Microsoft's big money - like windows and office. Not to mention other investments like azure, xbox, and ms research.
This is awful news for .NET devs- ASP.NET MVC is the best thing that's happened to ASP.NET since it began. Losing the lead guy on that project is worrying.
but, unfortunately Mono just doesn't cut it (Boehm GC? Really? s-gen is a nightmare too, before you counter with that) and Windows isn't a realistic option for a lot of people.
Forget about web stuff though. Mono fastcgi is not production ready (lots of little things, the interplay of nginx and Mono's fastcgi server 'lost' some routes, particularly scriptmethods).
Mod_mono is better... until you start getting OutOfMemoryExceptions. My understanding of the problem is that the Boehm GC is non-compacting, and thus, unless you (somehow) craft your application memory use patterns perfectly, will run out of memory if you churn through enough allocations.
From the mono ASP.NET FAQ:
Why does the memory consumed by the Mono process keep growing?
Mono currently uses a conservative, non-moving, non-compacting garbage collector. This means that the heap is not compacted when memory is released. This means that applications can produce memory allocation patterns that will effectively make the process grow, just like C, C++, Perl, Python applications would.
It is hence important to not get into patterns that would create these holes, for example such a hole could be created if you create a block of size SIZE, release it, and then create two blocks of size SIZE/2+1.
ASP.NET in Mono is particularly vulnerable to this kind of memory problems because it is easy for developers to define APIs that transfer large blobs of data like entire image files, these would allocate a lot of memory that can easily be fragmented.
A simple solution is to try to write your software in a way that large data blocks are not allocated, but instead your application handles them in blocks (like writing a "copy" command).
So the new GC, S-Gen is available, but for us at least, ~6 months ago it was really buggy. Some of our code would inexplicably cause mono crashes in the allocator. We couldn't run our apps with it, at all.
So ultimately we were left with restarting our webserver process every 30 minutes or so, or we could switch back to Windows web servers. Mono was decently performant, but going back to Windows we had a slight but noticable performance increase.
Don't get me wrong, Mono is awesome for a lot of things, and it kicks fuckin' ass to run my C# on Linux. But the ASP.NET side of things is just not mature enough. It's possible I'm just a bad programmer and if I'd taken the time to re-architect our allocation patterns to play nice with Boehm this story would have a happier ending, but alas :)
P.S. None of this stuff is fresh in my mind right now, so shoot me an email you have more questions or run into any specific situations or whatnot.
I would want to deploy ASP.NET MVC3-based web applications so restarting the web server sounds like it'd be my only option (I'm not going to waste my time re-architecting things if it's eventually likely to run out of memory anyway).
Then again, I haven't tackled switching away from MSSQL (aside from learning to use a new DBMS, I'm a fan of stored procs too so I'd have to learn a new SQL dialect), either. Since my time is probably worth more than Windows licenses, it looks like sticking to Windows is the logical choice for now.
Thanks for the offer to pick your brain... I may take you up on it some time :)
FWIW, Postgres does stored procs, too. Different SQL though, of course.
If Microsoft had their heads screwed on straight MVC would be the default ASP.NET web-site project type in Visual Studio and Linq would have gotten the love it deserved, even if it competed with EF. I fear that without Haack's leadership MVC will be mishandled and slowly die off.
Edit: To clarify, I mean Linq to SQL. It was a decent, lightweight, highly usable ORM that has now been more or less deprecated in favor of EF. For now it's not so bad because Linq to SQL only just recently wandered off into the twilight, but eventually the lack of support will make it harder and harder to use and EF will be the only option.
Also, I think it's a natural progression for the project to start out as a "skunkworks" system, and be gradually more mainlined as it matures. It's on version 3 now, and version 4 is right around the corner.
I'd rather see it happen that way than have a huge release and a giant push onto a platform that isn't fully realized. Most "enterprise" organizations would never move onto a version 1.0 platform anyway.
Also, FWIW, a lot of Microsoft's biggest public facing sites run on ASP.NET MVC now, so even if you assumed a lot of stupidity or evilness, there's a lot of inertia behind ASP.NET MVC.
Unless you've got a free ticket onboard the MSFacts Train.
That strategy has certainly fattened their wallets handsomely over the last several decades, but it's ultimately self-defeating. By failing to capture the most skilled developers, and by failing to cater to the most critical development needs (high-throughput business critical web services being a prime example) they have been alienating such developers. And those developers are ultimately the ones who set the standards (in some cases literally, when they are in positions of power at large companies) that other developers tend to follow. And that momentum can be difficult to break. By the time MS realizes it they will be obsolete faster than they can react. And it won't be because the entire world changed overnight, it'll be because the world has been changing for a long long time and it will have finally caught up to their core business.
I didn't realize I was having a discussion on Slashdot. My mistake.
https://github.com/mono https://github.com/nhibernate https://github.com/ravendb
Good to see more momentum in that direction, though of course!
Also, MS contributions toward libuv (part of node.js project)
https://github.com/ServiceStack
Because there's a lot of C# in there as well :)
- Web Service Framework (+ many Example/Starter Projects)
- Json Jsv Csv Text Serailizers (+ Benchmarks)
- Redis Client
- Redis Web Services + Redis Admin UI
- Orm
- Logging Framework
- Caching API with Memcached, Redis, InMemory & FileSystem providersIts possible to sway the windows developer community to branch out and hopefully more people in the community will take initiative to sway others to do so.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-reorg-scott-gu...
IMO MS is too much driven by profits and control to realize expanding the .NET OSS community will be a NET win for their .NET platform and surrounding tooling / aspirations.
Perhaps he'll work on a whole bunch of non-Microsoft stacks now? Getting Open Source within Microsoft and the Microsoft communities is probably more an issue with culture rather than tooling - a hire won't 'fix' that. It would take many counter-culture things (and years) to change I think. Phil working at Github rather than wanting to work at Microsoft is the interesting aspect, and I can't see why that would be 'good' for Microsoft.
Congrats to Phil and Github!
Edit: Git tools, not GitHub tools.
You don't need to use SSH either, Github (and bitbucket) supports https.
All the best to Haack!
Where?
EDIT: my beef with Codeplex is that I just don't find it very usable when I'm researching something. Purely as a repository for things like NuGet packages it's probably fine.
I'm sure you'll do some much needed good out there as the "Windows Badass".
The experience so far from ex-Softie seems to suggest that people will eventually leave MS ecosystems once they're outside the company.
The evolution is as follow:
Cheering for MS -> Hired by MS -> Trying to change the culture -> work for a while -> leave MS -> "Hello New Tech!"
PS: This isn't about good or bad.
I also play with Ruby (and Rails as well) on my free time.
Somehow I like my current setup. Maven 2/3 is the biggest killer tool for me (aside from CLI and Eclipse). Ruby tools like gems, capistrano, rake are all awesome for me.
Eclipse has been awesome so far for me. Tons of plugins (I use checkstyle, findbugs, m2clipse, subclipse). Eclipse also comes with JUnit runner (and Git out of the box in the recent version) while VS.NET used to be lacking unless you get the top of the line (even then, you'd have to learn a lot to know how to use the VS.NET Test aspect I believe).
Everything I can do with VS.NET I can do with Eclipse. But then again I may not be very well versed in VS.NET in the past.
I've always installed Console2, Vim, and Cygwin in all of my Windows machines.
I don't know how you use Java at Amazon and to be honest, sometime it depends on the project and the culture as well. I tend to force my team to always clean up our scripts/builds to make the overall development experience enjoyable.