[chrislomax]

While I agree with some of these points the biggest one for me is client adoption.

All clients assume everything is run in Linux. I don't even know why this mindset is so popular.

When we develop something and the client wants to host it I can guarantee (more or less) that the platform is Linux and they want to know why the software we have written doesn't work on Linux.

I know there is Mono but I always use IIS to run our software as that's what I am used to and that is the platform is is meant to work on.

I do love .NET, I've used it since it was launched. I do want to have a change though. I just don't know what language to dip into next.

I'll never leave .NET though as it's where I really started programming (after VBA...). I've just discovered Umbraco too which I've just fallen in love with.

Recommendations on languages I can try would be appreciated. I don't like this minefield we are in at the minute, I never know what is going to stick around and what is a fad.

[pjmlp]

> All clients assume everything is run in Linux. I don't even know why this mindset is so popular.

Might be on your part of the globe. On my little world, we have enough Windows only clients to keep us busy.

[chrislomax]

We are based in the UK. I don't know if it's the clients and the type of work we are filling but we seem to be migrating a lot of people from Wordpress so typically they expect everything to still run on Linux.

Our clients are normally ones who have come from a small background and are growing quite rapid, this customer is almost certainly on some type of Linux offering.

It's probably a mix of the clients we target and the geographical location.

[UK-Al05]

Probably because of your types clients, in bigger companies windows can be used heavily.

[pjmlp]

On my case, Germany with lots of Fortune 500 clients.

[chrislomax]

What size of projects are they?

We do a lot of integration projects with our clients, ie integrating with CRMs / ERPs and the timescales on these projects is usually about 10/12 weeks. I enjoy this project turnaround as it means I'm never stagnant on the same project for long and I get to experience new things.

I imagine the projects for a Fortune 500 is 1 or 2 years long with thousands of man hours?

EDIT: Clarified a question

[pjmlp]

> I imagine the projects for a Fortune 500 is 1 or 2 years long with thousands of man hours?

Yes. Also multiple consulting companies working on the same project.

[skriticos2]

Try Qt. It's a mature cross-platform framework with a long history back and a good momentum forward. It's also very well deigned.

http://qt-project.org/

[yakz]

Qt5, CMake, C++11. It's definitely good enough to use.

[codexon]

Maybe because of license issues? Windows also uses more resources.

[chrislomax]

I think this is what frustrates me. We've slowly started reducing the amount of Windows machines in our cluster as the licensing for SQL went from £160 a month per CPU up to £240 per CPU in the space of 2 years.

This is unacceptable.

We can't run a business trying to guess what this will be in another 12 months time.

Resource is a big issue, I recently fired up a small Linux box on Digital Ocean as a test; it's 512mb with a small CPU. The machine barely runs at any overhead when dormant. A Windows box is using 1GB before the operating system has finished loading

[_random_]

You can try Clojure - it is both CLR and JVM. Lisps seem to never die completely :). Definitely not mainstream though.

[chrislomax]

Thanks.

I know this is something I can do right now but a few things I wanted to look at was node.js and Angular.

I'm definitely in need of catching up on some new techniques, I've been so engrossed in doing paid work that I've not had time to pick up a book and get back to the fun bit of programming

[_random_]

That would be a good experience!

You probably know this, but just a couple of generic facts up front:

Node.js is basically a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_pattern implementation with some package management on top (similar to NuGet) plus a bit of healthy hype (solves all problems!). Microsoft is going to add this option as well it seems: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/02/18/introducin...

Angular is basically an MVVM implementation for JS, where most things are observable by default plus all the benefits and disadvantages of dynamic weak typing and lack of OOP. Directives are a new concept I guess, scope inheritance is another concept to watch out for (don't forget to install the Chrome extension for scope inspection - Batarang; .NET Demon + Chrome LiveReload is a nice thing to try as well when going WebAPI on server side). It is probably the best MVVM JS framework so far, so a good thing to know. Microsoft guys are using it too sometimes it seems (check the sources): http://status.modern.ie.

[chrislomax]

I didn't know any of that so I appreciate the comment.

I think my next "fun" app will be a real time app using as many of the "new" technologies as possible.

I've been stagnant far too long now and it's beginning to show

[650REDHAIR]

Post an update when you build the next app! We love real time and are interested in seeing new approaches.