[themgt]

I doubt most Rails developers spend much time thinking about .NET

There's a large and growing number of useful, productive high-level languages, frameworks, databases, webservers, tooling, etc. The thing they all have in common is they're open source, they can be used on a variety of POSIX-compatible operating systems and distros, they're often used together, share underlying libraries, and help build off each other's advances.

OTOH, .NET is stuck in the walled garden it built around itself, with its fanboys trying to scream out over the walls at the rest of the world bustling by, demanding we pay them more attention.

Well sorry, no. You guys enjoy that garden though; you keep telling us how nice it is!

[MattRogish]

Indeed. I've been a developer for about 13 years. The last 6 and change has been doing Rails and JS app development (I started out doing VC++ apps for Windows). I haven't thought about MS stack at all since about 2002. And I don't recall any presentations at RailsConf this year about .NET. No one in my circles even gives .NET a second thought.

ASP MVC may be pretty rad, but I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language) and I don't feel like buying into the Microsoft ecosystem. It's not one that shares my values and culture, and from the outside it seems to be losing momentum and relevance. I'm not aware of many developers who would decide to adopt Rails over .NET due to these "lies" - the choice is first cultural, then technical.

I'm not suggesting that .NET shops are worse places to work (although that has been my personal experience) but there's something about the MS ecosystem that puts .NET shops at risk of turning into overly-stuffy/corporate, aesthetically-unpleasing shops. There are exceptions of course (FogCreek/StackOverflow) but they don't appear to be the norm.

[dagw]

I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language)

Why? I've spent the best part of the last 5 years programming python and JavaScript. Recently however a new project has shown up where I might have to use C# and I'm really excited. From what I've seen and based on the little tests I've done, C# looks like an awesome language. Striking a prefect balance between the being too dynamic and free from and being too rigid. What is it about C# that you "hate"?

[irahul]

> but I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language)

I won't argue about Ruby being a better language(I like C# and Ruby and I am not inclined to pick a winner). But what version of C# have you used? If you had a brush with earlier versions of C#, I suggest you http://www.manning.com/skeet2/excerpt_contents.html read the first chapter.

[rpeden]

Indeed. With lambdas, closures, LINQ, and dynamic types when I want them, I find that C# feels sort of like a nice midway point between Java and Ruby.