[ilaksh]

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.

[jussij]

> 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.

[roc]

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.

[jussij]

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.

[roc]

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.

[cookiecaper]

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".

[jussij]

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.

[cookiecaper]

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.

[CloudNine]

> 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.

[cookiecaper]

>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?

[recoiledsnake]

>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.

[cookiecaper]

>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.

[CloudNine]

>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.

[cookiecaper]

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.

[cooldeal]

>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?

[Retric]

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.

[CloudNine]

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".