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Comment by cooldeal | Hacker News Reader

Great, another .NET is dying post voted up on HN. Didn't we have one of those just this morning?

Meanwhile, in the real world, Microsoft posted these earnings:

"Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year"

Inspite of competing products like Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Ruby, Java being given away for free, people are willing to pay for Windows Server, Visual Studio and IIS.

Does anyone have real data related to ".NET is dying" other than idle conjecture, short sighted "frog in the well" anectodes which sound like they're written and voted up by people sipping on a latte on a Macbook in a Starbucks in Silicon Valley?

Like the number of jobs posted? They seem to increasing every day.

Sigh, some people here just love these '.NET is dying' posts, perhaps some with a vested interest to scare startups from using it.

Again, any hard data will be appreciated that shows .NET is dying instead of the same paragraph upon paragraph of opinion and no links, references or data, we have enough HN comments of that already.

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Quite a few people are locked into that toolchain and don't have a choice but to continue buying what Microsoft is selling.

And I think that is one of the main reasons that many .NET developers who are a little bit familiar with open source and non-Microsoft technologies are starting to wonder if its worthwhile paying all of that money to have Microsoft make all of those architectural decisions for them.

Just start with the name, ".NET". What were they referencing there? The network. The web. Especially if you interpret that to mean the web, which I think it really is referring to, you have to ask yourself, is Microsoft or ANY one particular company really leading the way on the web? I think the answer is no. The leaders may be employed by some particular companies like Google, but they are mainly organizing projects on their own through things like github.

They chose that name for a reason. They knew if they wanted to stay relevant, they needed to focus on the web.

Does web development need Microsoft? Ask the average web developer. Personally, I don't think I can ever forgive them for what they have done (and continue to do) to Internet Explorer.

Does Microsoft need web development? Actually they are opposing forces when it comes right down to it. Microsoft makes too many billions of dollars through Windows-related products to really push the web platform forward. So they have actively been working to impede it by pushing out incompatible and underpowered browsers.

Can Microsoft's traditional licensing revenue streams survive a real conversion to open-source? LOL.

> Quite a few people are locked into that toolchain and don't have a choice but to continue buying what Microsoft is selling.

I don't buy that for a minute.

The Windows Server division is one of the fastest growing divisions inside of Microsoft.

From their last Q3FY13 report revenue from server and tools grew 11% driven by SQL server and Windows Server growth.

Based on those figures business is scrambling to buy into the Microsoft toolchain, not trying to leave.

Those numbers don't necessarily mean anyone is making a conscious decision to buy in. they could simply mean the installed base needs 11% more server licensing by dollar to scale/maintain their existing solutions.

So there are all these customers that hate the Microsoft toolchain and also know they are getting shafted by Microsoft.

In fact the customers hate Microsoft so much they decided to pay Microsoft an extra 11% bonus this year (and will probably pay another 11% bonus next year), even though they have all these free toolchain alternatives that they could be using.

Considering people have close to zero control over how Microsoft licenses, say, SQL Server? Yes.

And I never said they hated MS. I just said that increased revenue doesn't necessarily mean anyone is consciously buying in. Upgrading the old Exchange Server and adding another Domain Controller makes MS more money but for the IT department, the decision is simply "keep what we have under support and updated".

If you want to gauge how happy IT is with MS, you need to look at what they're choosing for brand new projects.

My anecdotal experience is that (happily or not) MS shops continue to choose MS. And small shops that couldn't afford MS anyway continue to not choose MS.

I don't know if that's a valid extrapolation. I, for one, in all my working years have never met a Linux company that was interested in switching to .NET, but I met many that wanted it the other way around if they could only justify the upfront investment to convert the proprietary application stack.

With cross-platform compatibility, specifically mobile compatibility [on platforms people actually use, i.e., not Windows Phone], being a major sticking point, .NET is becoming less and less desirable on the surface level.

Microsoft is just like Oracle. Big fancy businessmen who know nothing about development automatically buy into the MS stack just because it's a big name and the labor is easy to retain. Hardly any technical considerations go into it, and then they're upset when they [eventually] learn that the end result won't work with the iPad.

What about the alternate explanation that Windows Server is growing because demand for the products that already use Microsoft's stack is growing, despite the stack itself? What about the explanation that people are buying more server licenses than they used to due to increasingly widespread virtualization deployments? Whereas people used to buy relative big metal and run one OS on it, now people are taking that hardware and deploying many small VMs across it, each requiring its own license?

There are plenty of interpretations of that data that aren't "people are flocking to .NET".

I suspect all your alternate explanations as to why the server division is growing are true. The server divison is doing extremely well.

My point is I doubt very much the server division would be doing as well as it is if the Op was correct in saying people are locked into that toolchain.

Because that would suggest a lot of people would be unhappy with that situation (i.e. meaning bad press, bad word of mouth, bad for business) and many of those would also be trying desperately to leave that toolchain and succeeding (i.e. reduced sales).

The sales figures indicate the opposite is true.

I disagree. I don't think that people have to excite a lot of negative press or otherwise make a fuss with something just because they're moderately displeased with it. Most people won't go to the effort unless the tools are egregiously bad, and we know that Microsoft's stack isn't. They can still be quietly unhappy, locked into the platform with hundreds of thousands of man-hours invested into proprietary applications that depend heavily on major, hard-to-replace platform components (see: WPF, not implemented by Mono, or Silverlight, hit and miss via the unmaintained Moonlight), and buying server licenses due to a change in the way servers are provisioned.

Moving away from .NET is a long-term proposition, and it's an expense that few companies can justify no matter how much they dislike the platform. I believe you are claiming far too much credit for MS based off of a single growth figure.

> They can still be quietly unhappy, locked into the platform with hundreds of thousands of man-hours invested into proprietary applications that depend heavily on major, hard-to-replace platform components (see: WPF, not implemented by Mono, or Silverlight, hit and miss via the unmaintained Moonlight), and buying server licenses due to a change in the way change in the way servers are provisioned.

What change in the way servers are provisioned? Many companies still use Windows Server 2003 and even .NET 4.5 is supported on it. That sounds like FUD.

>They can still be quietly unhappy, locked into the platform with hundreds of thousands of man-hours invested into proprietary applications

They can also be happy with the ease of use of Active Directory and Group Policy instead of relying on half baked convulted perl scripts cooked up by a long gone sysadmin. Please, you're just embarassing yourself with your ignorant assumptions.

>What change in the way servers are provisioned? Many companies still use Windows Server 2003 and even .NET 4.5 is supported on it. That sounds like FUD.

I explained this in my initial post in this thread. Virtual machines are having a major effect on the provisioning of servers, requiring more OS licenses than prior. The person I replied to conceded this point.

>They can also be happy with the ease of use of Active Directory and Group Policy instead of relying on half baked convulted perl scripts cooked up by a long gone sysadmin.

LDAP

>Please, you're just embarassing yourself with your ignorant assumptions.

You weren't capable of processing my first post, and are now harassing me for discussing Microsoft in a MS thread, so who should be the embarrassed one here?

>I don't know if that's a valid extrapolation. I, for one, in all my working years have never met a Linux company that was interested in switching to .NET, but I met many that wanted it the other way around if they could only justify the upfront investment to convert the proprietary application stack.

Thanks for doing exactly what the OP requested commenters NOT to do.

From the OP post:

"Does anyone have real data related to ".NET is dying" other than idle conjecture, short sighted "frog in the well" anectodes which sound like they're written and voted up by people sipping on a latte on a Macbook in a Starbucks in Silicon Valley?

Again, any hard data will be appreciated that shows .NET is dying instead of the same paragraph upon paragraph of opinion and no links, references or data, we have enough HN comments of that already."

The world is much much much bigger than what you saw in all your working years. That's why personal anecdotes are quite worthless and we need real numbers.

So many paragraphs of speculation and no links or references from people living in their own little bubble and mistaking it for the world.

>Thanks for doing exactly what the OP requested commenters NOT to do.

I countered jussij's perspective, equally posted without "links or references" (which don't necessarily make something valid, fyi), with my own. I didn't reply to the parent post that said "please don't say anything mean about .NET unless you can prove it". That poster is not the internet police, we are free to continue to speculate and navel-gaze and counter-navel-gaze despite his or her statement.

So, you're welcome.

>I countered jussij's perspective, equally posted without "links or references"

No, he posted a publicly verifiable figure which is audited by the SEC and punishable with heavy penalties for faking, 11% increase of revenue in the quarter, up from last years quarter, whereas you continue the trend of the thousand other HN comments which say .NET is dying because they personally don't know of a company using it. How many companies do you know? How many companies exist in the US? Keep up the navel gazing. Your other posts also are idle speculation hopelessly stuck in your own bubble and your post is not very different from line noise at this point.

He posted his interpretation of a cherry-picked accounting figure. I told him why that interpretation may not be valid. It's a fair discussion point.

>Keep up the navel gazing.

Thanks, I will. I enjoy sharing opinions and interpretations and getting feedback on these. I don't find discussion fora where all of our posts need bibliographies very exciting in general.

>I, for one, in all my working years have never met a Linux company that was interested in switching to .NET, but I met many that wanted it the other way around if they could only justify the upfront investment to convert the proprietary application stack.

Which regions did you work at?

The cost of the MS tool-chain is basically a rounding error on internal software projects. An enterprise MSDN subscription is a under 1% of my billable rate for the year and servers are ridiculously cheap even when paying for the windows stack. Now sure plenty of FOSS toolchain can work wonders, but when building small internal sites and compared to the Java stack we are simply far more effective.

PS: I have seen it both ways, Java redeveloped in .Net and .Net redeveloped in Java. Generally things where better in the .Net world. I spent years as a Java developer and find the idea of going back is horrifying.

So, .NET is dying because quite a few people are locked into it? Sounds like you got it backwards.

And the red herrings about the name .NET don't make any sense except if you look from the context of the prevalent buzzwords and jargon at the end of 90s. Like, say "dotcom".

You couldn't buy the VS licenses + SQL Server + Windows Server with the money YCombinator provides you.

So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

Not every startup has to work with the small amount YC hands out. I know of a fair amount of startups using an MS stack, and they are doing very well. Of course, they are not SV cool, but they are making good money. You should sit back and analyze what you just said, because it is a pretty strange point to make.

My current company uses extensively .NET and I have almost a decade of experience working with it at my last employer, where I was also responsible for choosing and buying such products.

In my last employer (government), we didn't choose .NET, microsoft won the contracts. In the last update when I still worked there, we spent 250k USD to update our programmers VS to 2010 + windows 7. (I wonder if they will now update again). SQL Server prices are similar to oracle's with similar features.

In my startup (not a startup anymore) I had to spend 40k just to get the environment needed for a project (involving telephony) the only reason we had to use .NET was because the hardware manufacturer only provided driver+tooling for windows and some components were exclusively for .NET. Because we mostly use linux and macs, we also had to buy windows licenses. In my country, a Windows 8 license cost almost 2x the minimum wage.

We happened to have a discussion if we should give up or not a specific product because of the microsoft taxation on our business. The only reason we decided to keep using .NET is the cheap labor and the lack of hardware suppliers willing to provide us drivers and tools for linux.

So yes, microsoft damages not only startups, but companies in general.

Would you say that Oracle, and IBM also damage companies?

I don't know much about IBM products but I'm a heavy Oracle DB user in the process of migrating to Postgres due to simple problems, cost not being one of them. In fact, you will see a lot of users still using very old Oracle versions and getting full support from oracle.

Oracle (DB product) is the wrong choice for most startups, I actually wrote a post about that some time ago: http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/2/1/this-is-why-y...

I'm curious as to what the cost threshold is (in your opinion). This is good data to understand. May you share more?

That just means yc gives too little money.

Two things:

(a) The money YC is giving isn't intended to solve capex problems like this. It's meant to make the first couple months of getting a minimal offering viable for small early teams. In the YC model, if the problem your business solves involves significant capex costs, you use YC to match your company with a next round of investors to handle that problem.

(b) The reality is that you do get enough money to fund a .NET stack when you get into YC, because YC comes with an assurance of immediate follow-on convertible note investment.

Neither of these two points makes .NET a better choice for early-stage startups than Rails or Django or PHP; Microsoft has to smooth over the expense problem with programs like Bizspark.

You can say the same of any commercial vendor.

How you would do a startup in a world without BSD and Linux, just with commercial vendors?

There are more out there than just Apple and Microsoft.

Somehow I doubt anyone really joins a programme like YC's for the money.

In any case, if you want to work with the best tools, sometimes you have to pay a premium to get them. That's either damaging to people who can't/won't pay the money or it's an advantage for those with enough confidence in what they're doing to make the investment, depending on which side of the line you're on.

You don't need to buy them: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx

Prime example: Stackoverflow/StackExchange is built on the Microsoft stack.

BizSpark has rules many startups cannot follow and is only valid for 3 years. This is the same selling scheme used by drug dealers.

If your startup is around 3 years in the cost of paying for the tools won't matter.

"BizSpark has rules many startups cannot follow"

Please explain. The rules seem pretty simple to me and certainly something every company can follow:

  - Privately held.
  - Less than 3 years old.
  - Earning less than $1 million per year.
  - Developing software.

After 3 years you can afford to purchase extra licenses (you get to keep the BizSpark ones). If not, your business sucks.

Disclaimer: BizSpark member.

There's a LOT of startups here http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/Partners/Startups.aspx

>This is the same selling scheme used by drug dealers.

Would you hold Google to the same standard and say that's true of their free Google Apps for education and how they use free email to sign you into Google.com so they can track you across different PCs?

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/

Do you happen to work for Microsoft?

If not, cool. But if so, would be good to be clear. You've suddenly become very active with what I'd consider an overly Microsoft approach (looking at your comments from the past few hours).

(ex 'softie here).

Not sure if that is a prime example, since StackOverflow was built with the wealthy businessman Joel Spolsky as a primary backer. That doesn't diminish anything they accomplished, it just means that they didn't do it without access to sufficient resources.

At Stack Overflow we ran on Bizpark til sometime in 2012, it really is a very nice program (everyone seems to forget that you keep the licenses you get, it's not like you have to re-buy everything when you graduate).

While I suppose in theory Joel could have thrown a lot of money away just because it didn't happen that way. Stack Overflow was running on it's own income until the first round of funding ( http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/announcing-our-series-... ), excepting the pre-launch period (everyone might have just taken equity then, I don't know I wasn't around until just before the series A). I think it was mostly ad income, though Careers ( http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ ) was around fairly early too.

Disclaimer: Stack Exchange employee

No matter how disciplined Spolsky was with the funds, nothing's ever the same if you know that you have the option to just inject a bunch of money into one of your projects should the need arise (and of course, SO had another non-cash leg up: the blogs of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky as major marketing avenues, i.e., the instant attention of large swaths of the developer workforce). If you don't have that option, regardless of if it's used or not, you play by different rules.

Stack Exchange is cool and everything, but it didn't have the same difficulties that face most bootstrapped startups.

>"Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year"

So, they made in a year something around what Apple makes every quarter just from iPad sales? That's the rosy sign MS's "Servers and Tools" business is doing OK?

>So, they made in a year something around what Apple makes every quarter just from iPad sales? That's the rosy sign MS's "Servers and Tools" business is doing OK?

That's their server and tools revenue in a quarter, not a year. In your rush to compare it with an irrelevant and totally unrelated figure you've taken leave of facts and reality.

Why not compare the yearly figure now with how much Exxon makes by selling gas and then conclude the Server and Tools division is not doing okay? I mean that's what you want to conclude right?

>That's their server and tools revenue in a quarter, not a year. In your rush to compare it with an irrelevant and totally unrelated figure you've taken leave of facts and reality.

Haven't taken out any facts -- the parent poster (you?) didn't add it was a quarter result in the first place. And the "X% up from last year" didn't help.

That said, it's totally unrelated only in that the end product sold is different. People still compare companies based on their revenue all the time -- including totally different beasts such as IBM and MS, or, indeed, Exxon and Apple. If you want to measure relative strength it's quite insightful.

>Why not compare the yearly figure now with how much Exxon makes by selling gas and then conclude the Server and Tools division is not doing okay? I mean that's what you want to conclude right?

No, I want to conclude that MS, and their enterprise sales specifically, which was once the huge behemoth of the computing industry, makes a not that impressive revenue compared to other players.

It might even be their best revenue ever. It still is worse compared to what they made vs what other companies made a decade or so ago.

In other words, the point I tried to make, maybe unsuccessfully, is that they might be billionaires, and they even might more than ever, but whereas once they used to own the town, now there are several other billionaires around, including some multi-billionaires.

Okay, I agree, Apple and Google rock and Microsoft sucks.

So how is all that related to the article idea's and the OPs point about the FUD on HN about .NET dying? Is .NET dying because Apple makes more money selling iDevices than Microsoft's Dev tools?

Lets be upfront here about the topic being discussed, is it "Where is .NET headed?" or is it "Does MS make less money than its competitors and therefore sucks?"

>Lets be upfront here about the topic being discussed, is it "Where is .NET headed?" or is it "Does MS make less money than its competitors and therefore sucks?"

It's not about sucking or not. It's about if it's as a big player as it used to be, or if the wind got sucked out of it's wings, and now is on decline mode.

Nobody said anything about "sucking" or that it will die financially tomorrow. It might still be around 2 centuries later.

Because HN readers are too young to remember the days without open source, where you needed to pay for the tooling, and think Microsoft is the only commercial vendor of developer tools.

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