[dev360]

I say that a lot and I feel like .NET is loosing relevance. Embracing open source and making Linux a first-class citizen in the eco system would be the only way for .NET to increase adoption or stay technologically relevant, and unfortunately its happening too slow.

[mpeg]

How is .NET losing relevance?

You can make mobile apps with Xamarin, and apps for any desktop OS thanks to Mono.

You can make high-quality 2D/3D games with Unity

You can make high-performance web applications with ASP.NET + IIS.

[dev360]

Sure you can, but the technology of the future is not being built or run on windows stacks. You find it everywhere in the enterprise, yet almost every big new tech company that has come up in the last 10 years all rely primarily on open source technology.

[mpeg]

Xamarin / Mono and Unity run pretty much everywhere. Unity even runs on WebGL, none of this is tied to windows stacks.

Also, Microsoft has a great startup programme with Bizspark, we built a company on it a few years ago that eventually ended up as part of a $700m acquisition

[macca321]

And ASP.NET will now run everywhere too (that's one major chunk of this vNext stuff).

[mpeg]

Of course, I was focusing on the current ecosystem. I'm very excited for the future of ASP.NET and C#

[justathrow2k]

Too slow for what? Are you suggesting that .NET technology is traveling on a steady path towards becoming irrelevant?

[dev360]

Yes. Most users of .NET is in the enterprise (as opposed to tech and startups) and Java has positioned itself as the go-to platform for big data analytics and processing.

I think this comes down to clinging to an antiquated product model. A lot of the technologies that are seeing rapid adoption are open source and driven by transparent communities. In some cases companies back them (e.g. cloudera, datastax, 10gen, typesafe).

[jabits]

And where exactly do you think most devs work? As far as startups go, and we may be usual, but we are a healthcare analytics company using Sql Server for medium? data and processing, with a pretty light .Net middleware/front-end.

[dev360]

Yes this might be true right now, but take a look at a lot of the tech startups are cropping up - humor yourself and look up a list of the tech ipos the last two years. They are overwhelmingly based on open source technology and they are also displacing or disrupting your traditional 'enterprise' businesses.

Even though C# and .NET has a huge developer following, .NET is losing ground to OSS within the top traffic driving sites. 10 years ago, people would build their MVP in .NET because it was the best technology around, but nowadays I see more people building new businesses and placing their strategic technology bets elsewhere (Java/Python/Ruby or Node).

A lot of these developers don't want to be married to the Windows eco-system, for a variety of reasons. Microsoft cannot continue to thrive on the sole basis of it being the only game in town anymore. So all in all what I'm trying to say is I don't think the long-term prospect is looking great.

[V-2]

Without Linux it's surely doomed.

PS. I heard 2015 will be the year of Linux

[pmelendez]

"PS. I heard 2015 will be the year of Linux"

I heard that too in 2012[0], 2013 [1] and 2014 [2]

[0] http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2012010900341OSOO [1] http://www.finnbay.com/linus-torvalds-leadership-defines-201... [2] http://meshedinsights.com/2014/03/14/2014-year-of-the-linux-...

[V-2]

I know, that's the joke ;) (and it goes waaay further back than 2012...)