| >What are you thoughts as to why .NET hasn't taken off at startups? To echo what others said... A lot of hot startups are founded by young college kids. They don't have money for expensive Visual Studio licenses to program in C# and .NET world. In contrast, the alternative dev tools like Java, Ruby, PHP were free. In college classes, they would have played around with free software instead of Microsoft. Microsoft charged money in multiple areas of the stack: the compiler (VS) cost money, the database (MS SQL Server) cost money, and the operating system (Windows licenses) cost money. In contrast, PHP+MySql+Linux was $0. Microsoft later tried to reverse the loss of mindshare with promotional programs such as DreamSpark and BizSpark[0]. That's where a small business could get Microsoft dev tools for free for a limited time. However, those enticements really didn't change a lot of minds because founders knew that once the startup had revenue a year later, they'd have to pay a "Microsoft tax". Yes, MS later radically changed strategy by making their tools open source and more compatible on Linux. However, it was too late because the culture of startups avoiding MS technology was already deeply ingrained. The StackOverflow site would be one of the few high-profile startups that bought into the Microsoft tech stack. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+dreamspark+bizspar... |
I don't agree. When I was a student, Microsoft was pushing their MSDN for students very hard, as well as their other programs (like Microsoft Student Partner). As a student, Microsoft's tools have always been free and very easy to obtain. On top of that, they were the only ones that provided me with free cloud credits to host my stuff. I never gotten any from competitive cloud vendors. This is in Europe though, I feel Microsoft has a much stronger foothold here than in the US.