Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?
I have been a proud user of .NET framework for 6 years now and I still think it is a really awesome product and Microsoft did a wonderful job developing it.
WinForms is the best way to develop Windows application (with occasional jump into Interop for extra APIs); ASP.NET is enjoyable way to develop web applications and WCF is just pure honey. If all this makes me sound like Micro$oft fanboy, that’s because I am. .NET is really awesome and Visual Studio is the best way to do any kind of development. Especially with Resharper installed. I don’t know how JetBrains did it, but somehow they sold their souls to Satan and in return they can unleash the dark magic of Ctrl+Alt+Space.
But what puzzles me is that not too many people use ASP.NET to create cool products. Sure there are Community Server, MySpace, DotNetKicks and DasBlog; there are all very fine products, but compare them to LAMP, Rails and Java lineup: Digg, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Backpack and the Company, Delicious, all the Google Apps, Mint, Meebo, Twitter, Zillow and of course Infinite Cat Project. If you checkout the new startups on TechCrunch, it seems like every new startup is something Linux based and is not ASP.NET.
And I really want to know why. If you are a new startup, you have only one shot at it, so you really want to use the best tools available. And it seems like everybody picks anything but ASP.NET, unless you are doing corporate development.
Why are there so few startups that use ASP.NET? Is it the cost of tools? Hosting cost? Restrictive licensing? Or maybe ASP.NET became “the van” of web development. Safe, bulky and definitely not sexy.
I am sure that I have missed some really awesome ASP.NET projects, so please post the links in comments. Any thoughtful feedback is welcome. All flaming and FUD will be moderated.
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I was wondering the same thing for a long time. It even got me to move out to Orange County because all the tech jobs in the LA area _were_ Java and I did _not_ want to do that for a living, so I moved my butt out yonder only to later find MySpace had hidden their migration very well behind numerous URLs containing the old “/index.cfm?fuseaction=this.circutActionThat…”
I still think that them Venture Capital giants just weren’t sold on Microsoft and so the money (even though it required more of it) went to other technologies.
Good observation. I’am a .NET developer since .NET Beta and love MS products in terms of productivity. But if you look at the LAMP stack over the last 4 years, though the tooks are not as good as VS, the open source has helped developers get something out quickly. Even today, some of the taken for granted features such as URL Rewriting on Apache is not straight forward on IIS.
BTW, I just launched my new onlike dating site SearchPartner built 100% on MS stack using ASP.NET, SQL Server, AJAX and IIS. Give it a try!
Thanks
http://www.searchpartner.com
I think that one answer to this question came to me after reading Code Complete 2, especially chapter: “On which wave of technology” are you in.
When you create a totally new application, the advantages of asp.net you mentioned, become somehow irrelevant. Example: asp.net has log-in controls, along with a video on community site on how to work with it. But what happens when you simply do not need log-ins? Irrelevant.
So factors considered when doing a start-up are making asp.net not-as-good-as php or ruby.
That’s easy. ASP.NET Web Forms was designed specifically to bring VB6/Mort programmers into a web-enabled world. You don’t find Morts working on the latest and greatest web apps. I’ve been working with Web Forms off and on since Beta 1, and I’ve grown to loathe them. In trying to abstract away the details of working on the web, Microsoft has only succeeded in making things hopelessly complex. Give me something that embraces the web instead like Rails or PHP.
I was a PHP developer for 5 years before I saw the light that is ASP.NET!!! (been working with ASP.NET for about 2 1/2 years now) I personally will never touch a line of PHP code again. and no I never programmed in VB6 a day in my life.
I personally think that startups don’t use asp.net purely because of the cost of tools, and hosting. The framework is free… the hosting is always at least double if not quadruple the cost. this is usually because the servers need to run windows where Linux is free to the world. but I think the cost range is starting to get closer together lately… so hopefully we will see more asp.net apps out there on the net.
Not exactly a startup but how about http://cyberhomes.com?
Michael,
I would agree about the cost of the hosting. IIS hosting imposes a lot of limitation and they charge you for everything. Also, just like SearchPartner noticed, certain things are easier to do in Apache than in IIS.
And Rails with Migrations and Capistrano is just plain sexy. There isn’t really anything in ASP.NET that is sexy and exciting. It is a good and safe tool to use in corporate environment. But I want asp.net to be cool. There is some work to be done with Subsonic and Windsor but that’s not enough. Hopefully DLR will give the extra juice to asp.net.
Is there anyone reading this who stopped doing asp.net development and switched to something else? Besides softiesonrails?
1. Start-ups do not start with oodles of money. Two or three merry code jocks can afford to buy copies of Visual Studio. They are reluctant, however, to pay through their noses for hosting. You need Win2k3 and Iis6. Microsoft’s licenses are insanely complex and expensive compared to Linux and Apache. By the time venture capitalists step in, it’s too late. You have a full-blown application, and you don’t feel like re-writing it.
2. Recall what the previous versions of Visual Studio looked like. Horrific is the word if you were a web developer. Scott Guthrie and his boys were desktop developers. They had no idea of how web works. They had no idea of the HTML specification. AspNet was ill-conceived and ill-designed, and the fundamental flaws have been perpetuating through the latest version.
Money. that is the reason pure and simple. Just like barfoo said. Everything I have done on the web is financed by me and I cannot justify paying double or even 1/2 as much for hosting… and the money for the tools to be legal is outlandish.
And while winforms is nice. Startup money is not going to client development.
I like c# and I think ASP.net is nice but not what I would develop a site in for myself or a startup. Php or python or ROR seem to fit the way I think much better… it really comes down to choice I guess and I am cheap as are most startups… and cheap rules all.
The cost point is an interesting one though it is possible to find relatively cheap hosting now for ASP.NET applications. The host I use has equivalent pricing for Linux and Windows. With Web Developer Express being free this means that the cost of entry to ASP.NET is now very cheap indeed.
There are a few .NET applications now appearing. Microsoft CRM is probably the most well known business application (but Microsoft is hardly a start-up). I have also noticed a few web sites starting to use Windows SharePoint Services 3 which is built on ASP.NET (and is also free to host assuming that you have the appropriate license for Windows itself).
Really simple:
+ Cost for development and deployment. Web Developer Express is a toy in comparison to Netbeans, Zend Studio, Eclipse (with PHP Development Tools, RadRails, Java Development Tools, Python extension… ) PHP Eclispe….
+ Tools for server environment are not as good and so many as in LAMP (PHP, Linux, MySQL, Apache/Nginx/Lighty). Linux/OpenSolaris tools are more advanced than Windows-based ones.
+ With ASP.NET, you have only one choice. In LAMP world, you determine your needs and choose the tools you can afford.
+ Development tools for .NET is not as appealing as developers expect. Eclipse and Netbeans are as good as Visual Studio.NET but with no cost.
+ ASP.NET is not a good (frankly wrongly designed for the web) web framework and it is not a natural way to develop web applications in comparison to Ruby on Rails, PHP Frameworks (SolarPHP, Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony, Akelos…), Python (Django…)
+ ASP.NET is simply too complex. It needs a lot of memory, CPU and it is not as scalable as PHP, Python-based ones. The lightweight technologies like PHP and Python can be both interpreted and compiled. So they are can be as fast as native ones.
+ Lot of LAMP applications are open source ones that are very good resources to build new web applications on.
+ Linux as web servers or applications servers is much flexible and powerful than Windows counterpart.
+ The growth of PHP developer community can be seen clearly last years. PHP4 is obsolete. Lot of enterprise quality frameworks are built and attracted a lot of attention. PHP developers are becoming more mature and professional. They can develop more and more professional business-oriented web applications.
+ The appearance of Ruby on Rails has opened a new way to develop web applications. It leads to evolution of PHP frameworks and improvement in Java world.
+ The interoperability between open source technologies is in good state: Java to PHP, PHP to Python, PHP to Perl, Ruby to Java.
+ There is a stronger community spirit in LAMP community.
Digg (PHP), Yahoo (PHP), LinkedIn (Java EE), Flickr (PHP), Backpack (Ruby), Delicious (Perl), all the Google Apps (Python), Mint (PHP), Meebo (PHP vs C++), Twitter (Ruby), Zillow (Java EE), TechCrunch (PHP)
I think there are a couple of reasons:
1) MS has no marketing and solutions targeted at this specific audience, as some of you might be aware MS has a couple of “partner solutions”. These packages deliver all tools you need to develop software. There is one problem, this is ONLY available for client based or packaged software based business models. I have checked all available solutions for this (if anyone knows some hole in there offerings please let me know). It’s very unfortunate there is no ISV package for developers of SAS apps. Also these parter solutions require huge efforts from your company to comply with the requirements every year. Should the situation occur syou can’t comply, you are pretty much fucked. It will cost you a LOT of money to get the same.
2) The costs, for serious development you need an ide, testserver, version control etc. These costs a lot if you cannot use a partner solution. If you take the non sucking offerings from ms it would cost you like 3000+500 per cal for team server, 900 per visual studio ide. You can get server, office and windows for 300/year in the action pack. Pretty good deal, but the development software alone costs to much. Also hosting sql server is not cheap. 190/cpu for the standard edition per month. ofcourse express is free.
3) Using 3rd party offerings feels, I don’t know how to describe it, unstable, wrong or weird. Because of the tight integration of all microsofts offerings it feels kinda weird and wrong to use for example mysql and svn. Some people know what I mean. The community who uses 3rd party solutions in addition with .net is really small compared to the all MS companies.
4) asp.net is still pretty bad in writing w3c, semantic, html. You need special css adapters and stuff to use css based controls. Also you cannot set your own ID’s on controls with runat server. This pisses me off bad time, but its not really a big issue.
5) the general marketing tactics of ms to beat linux don’t work for the target audience. The target audience are not clueless managers who just pull their credit cards when they are provided with vague reports with terms like TCO and no hard numbers to backup those claims.
Its not a matter of why don’t they use it, its more of a matter of why should they use it. Why pay when you can get the exact same functionality for free with open source/free software? I’m not anti ms or so, but I think ms clearly needs a division who does marketing and provides solution for this specific target audience.
Some valid points has been made here. We developed our website initially in PHP. However, since we need some complex functionality, having a good debugger is very essential, and the standard PHP debuggers just don’t cut it.
Web Developer Express is free, and very good for most purposes. I develop class libraries using C# Express, and it works
However, if PHP would have had a good and easy-to-use debugger, I would have stayed with PHP, which is a fine language in itself.
What i think is that. Startups look for cheap solutions. And all open source web servers and libraries are even efficient and have a huge community base. So developers prefer using open source which give high performance in linux environment.
I think the answer lies with the licensing.
I am just starting a new project and the reasons I do not use .Net are:
1) .Net is not compatible (ok, I ignore Mono, because this is not an MS-effort and it is and never will be complete). Most things you develop with OS-tools will run on almost all platforms including Windows. So you can later choose another platform, if needed. (Bringing my applications onto Amazon EC2 is a snap – try this with a .Net application)
2) IIS translates to pain. We solved the problem beeing hacked by migrating from IIS to Apache a few years ago – on a Windows machine. Apache does the job and I will never ever touch IIS again. Maybe IIS is ok now, but Apache still is too.
3) Most problems we have to cover in the company I work for is Windows based software (from MS or other vendors). OS-software makes only few problems. That is a simple experience I made in the past.
4) You become dependent to things you would not like depend on?
– Does .Net run an another webserver than IIS?
– Does IIS run on another OS than Windows?
– Does Windows run on as many hardware as Linux?
– Do I know what the future will bring and whether those dependencies will once break my neck?
5) OS-Communities: I get good information from well informed people if I have a problem – most of the time. No NDA-bound people. MS and people who work with MS-software do not seem to be friendly to other people who contribute (eg. ndoc-case).
6) Fun. I do not believe, the people who work for MS have fun, but I know the people who develop OS do. This has an impact on the solutions they provide. I have fun too when using them.
7) Libraries: Have a look at CPAN for Perl or the huge amount of libraries and software you can find for Java or Python.
9) I feel free when using OS-software.
10) Everything around MS is very big and there are a lot of software, solutions and a huge market – but the rest of the world is so much bigger.
Thomas
I feel there are three main reasons startups don’t pick Microsoft products:
1. Lock-in. If you pick Microsoft as a platform, that’s it. You will be most likely be running a Windows server, using MS tools, and running an MS database. Not only is the cost prohibitive, but the way Microsoft locks developers in is a big turnoff. Why select Microsoft when I can use Ruby, Java, PHP, etc. and run my applications on any platform and database. The flexibility provided by open sources is a big plus.
2. Cost – MS products are expensive and not worth the price. That’s the prevailing opinion in the open source world and I’d have to agree. I’ve done .Net development in VS 2003 and 2005. This IDE costs hundreds of dollars and still is not as good as Eclipse or Netbeans. Why develop in a proprietary, Windows only format when I can use better, free tools, and run my applications in a platform agnostic way?
3. Ethics – A large number of developers will never use anything from Microsoft for no other reason than they believe MS is an unethical company that is bad for innovation, bad for technology, and bad for the business. Microsoft’s many bi-polar statements in regards to open source have only stoked the fire and encouraged more enterprising open source developers to give MS the finger.
Who in their right mind wants to run:
1. IIS — a sub-par web server, and pay for it, and pay for Windows
2. SQL Server — an awful rdbms, and pay for it, and pay for Windows
And then all of your developers have to run Windows — which is painful for them and expensive for you.
So lets say you love .NET. I’ll buy that, since .NET is a really nice bit of technology — one of the best of the last 10 years. But are you really going to try to use it on Mono?
To Scott Swank – I haven’t given much thought to Mono. If I go with Linux hosting, I will go with Rails. Regarding IIS – I agree. Developing on XP is a pain in a butt. IIS 6.0 is better. It seems like IIS 7.0 will be a lot better. But we just have to wait 2-3 years for it to become available. I guess I can develop on Vista and deploy on some trial accounts with hosts that offer IIS 7.0 hosting, but that seems like too much pain. I don’t quite agree about SQL Server though. 2005 is quite nice and 2007 will have even more features.
To Dean – Lock-in argument makes a lot of sense. If you work with ASP.NET – you are choosing Windows, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. You could go with other options but that’s not as easy. Just like Tomh mentioned in his comment. The ethics argument is valid as well.
Open Source and standards-based software: GOOD
Proprietary, non-standard, mediocre software: BAD
It’s really as easy as that, I guess. Or is it because Microsoft just sucks in any way imaginable.
And, Sasha, if you really believe that ASP.NET is great stuff, I must assess that you’re part of the problem.
I’ve done ASP.NET web development with C# for two years. Today I can’t understand how I could allow the most uninspired of all software companies to dictate they way I work for such a long time.
For the record: Today I develop web applications with Ruby on Rails on Mac OS X. An it’s so bloody great, I could scream all the time.
Hi Rhonda, Thank you for your comment. I have heard a lot of stories about developers leaving .net land and going to Rails.
What if MS completely supports Rails on .NET through DLR with all the Unicode, Multithreading goodness of the .net framework, would you use it?
By the way, what do you use for development on OS X? TextMate or something else?
Same can be said for Java. Where are all the hip startups using Java? Yet Java is free and there are plenty of free tools out there to support it. I think complexity is a big part of this. PHP is easy. ASP.Net and Java are enterprise grade tools with a steeper learning curve. Script kids can get pages developed easier with PHP and now ROR and all the other frameworks are doing a lot of the dev for you. I’m in Boston and most of the real work here is .Net. You rarely see someone looking for a PHP developer. Java work is in decline too here.
Open Source = Web 2.0/hipster script kids
ASP.Net/Java = Enterprise
The only way for Microsoft to get my attention would be Steve Ballmer burning himself in front of an audience.
Seriously, I don’t believe it would convince a lot of Ruby developers if the .NET platform would support Ruby.
Since the Rails framework itself isn’t entirely thread-safe, multithreading wouldn’t be a big plus.
And contrary to many legends, Ruby _does_ support Unicode, albeit not natively. In Rails, I can perfectly handle Unicode throughout the whole web stack without difficulties.
The .NET framework is certainly not the ugliest kid on the block. From a technical perspective, it’s actually pretty good.
If only it was available for as many platforms as say Java or Ruby. The whole problem is that everything Micosoft has to offer comes with the provision of Windows.
For many people, including me, Windows just isn’t an option. Neither for development nor for deployment. The more I learned about computers and programming, the stronger grew my affection for UNIX-like systems. Like it or not but this is my choice.
As long as Microsoft doesn’t appreciate diversity and embraces open standards, I won’t make a move. I’m waiting for .NET to come to me. Java and Ruby are already here.
And yes, TextMate
Microsoft == expensive, restrictive, boring
FLOSS == free, flexible, fun
I think it’s a little of each, and more. I spent about four years with two companies, first building .Net web apps for the real estate market then building desktop client/server apps for a vertical market. .Net IS Java done better: a framework for large carefully deployed vertical solutions. Today I’m a LAMP guy and — despite the kinds of frustrations that any language or platform will give you — I’m loving it.
ASP.Net faces a couple of key disadvantages.
Cost. A solid .Net development setup for a team of three or four, plus the licenses for all the server-side software you’ll need to run things, can probably buy you half a man-year of developer time. This isn’t a HUGE issue if you’re launching a startup with funding, but quite a few of the groundbreaking sites out there started out as experimental skunk-works projects. You can cut costs by using free development tools (the C# compiler, after all, is a free download) but you lose a lot of the benefits that come with the platform.
Fewer hackers. This is very close to the first point, but it’s a bit different. The barrier for entry for most of the ‘hot’ languages on the *NIX side is low, closer to old-school ASP than the heavy-duty stuff of ASP.Net. That means a smaller pool of hobbyists-turned-coders to feed the project mill. While you probably don’t mind the higher barrier for entry if you’re hiring a team to develop some enterprise software, most startups don’t happen that way. This isn’t even a .Net specific issue — it’s more about the changing view of ’scripting languages’ when compared to ‘real languages’ like C, Java, C#, C++, and… well. Whatever flavor of C you can think of.
Not the best fit for web RAD. .Net is an amazing platform for developing Windows applications. Truly awesome. Unfortunately, ASP.Net tends to err on the side of ‘making the web work like WinForms’. When it comes time to web-enable your .Net based client/server application, you’ll thank your lucky stars for ASP.Net’s familiarity. When you’re trying to pound out a prototype of a new social networking site, however, you’ll feel like you’re dragging a Volvo uphill. It just doesn’t make as much sense.
The people are the platform. It’s obviously not universal, but the GPL/MIT/Creative Commons influence that permeates the non-corporate *NIX side of the development world affects a lot more than just the software itself. Rapid dissemination of best practices, novel tools, and open-sourced solutions to common problems are standard operating procedure in the *NIX side of the fence. The Open Source world is a ‘gift economy’ — you gain karma and status by giving people things of value. Whether that’s a new caching API, patches for bugs in an existing framework, or hard-won knowledge about esoteric optimization issues, sharing is built into that development community’s fabric. Ultimately, this is far more important than the specifics of the specific software platform. This makes life hell if you’re trying to figure out how to sell boxed software, but if you’re trying to implement a cool idea and launch a startup in your spare time, the difference is night and day.
Am I talking out of my hat? Do I have blinders on? Have I missed fundamental improvements in the framework made over the last year or two? Quite possibly. But the question was asked, and that’s how I see it.
The question is interesting; I ended up writing up a more detailed response on my company’s blog. Thanks for posing it.
Rhonda Starke wrote:
> Open Source and standards-based software: GOOD
> Proprietary, non-standard, mediocre software: BAD
I’m not sure if it’s *that* black and white. Say, Microsoft would produce a really nice web server (IIS 7), work hard on making their ASP.NET output very standards-compliant and cross-browser compatible (it’s not all that bad even now), and push the mediocre pieces to grow excellent ones – would you go with proprietary, excellent and standards-based software? This is certainly a question of each developer’s own mindset and conception of ethics, and can’t be answered with a global “GOOD” or “BAD”.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t. While especially C# as a language and .NET in general is terribly nice technology, I always know that if Microsoft ever has to come to a decision between their well-being and that of the customers, the users and the greater health of the IT ecosystem, they’ll always prefer pushing their own agenda. Fortunately, there are not much of those hard decisions, but they happen… whether it’s office document standards, supporting Ogg media files in the HTML 5 <video> tag, tailoring everything for the Microsoft-only platform, …whatever.
In open source, it’s just impossible to do that, not only because of the community but also because of the licensing restrictions of GPL & friends. However fast or slow development will happen, it always happens in a way that is friendly to users and developers. That makes the Unix / open source platform a safe bet for those who prefer independence to (sometimes, but not necessarily) better tools.
I trust the community, while I do not trust Microsoft. Given, I’m just one of many, so this comment might not totally be on topic, but there’s more and more people who find non-Microsoft tools to work sufficiently well (if not better and cooler) so that the stuff that they’re writing can be reliably built on open source software.
In that light, I would even go as far as to claim that you posed the question the wrong way. You might wonder why people don’t use ASP.NET – I wonder which major benefits it offers that can make up for the non-existent trust, the costs and the platform dependence that it imposes, and the knowledge that by using Microsoft technologies I am actively participating in hurting others. (Mind that while open source projects do compete, they do so in an amicable way, while Microsoft has been doing crusades to discredit competitors with attacks below the belt.) My personal conclusion is that the benefits don’t outweigh the downsides.
Now all that’s left is a meaningful piece of statistics how many people think this way or that way. Judging by the number of open source based startups, one might be inclined to think that one camp outnumbers the other one. Especially in places where software development is driven by enthusiasm instead of simple need for money.
As for Rhonda’s comment – I for myself don’t understand how you can mark proprietary, non-standard software as BAD and at the same time use OS X. Perhaps it’ll come to me one time.
Jeff you’ve hit the nail right on the head with your well thought out response. I’ve done work in ASP and .NET but decided to switch to PHP for a project I’m doing in my in my spare time. Just to try and teach myself the language. I know it’ll be cheap to host but will scale if I need it to, and I love that fact that I have so much flexibility as to the tools I use. What’s even better is that there’s just so much helpful sample code and support out there amongst the OSS guys which has made it so much easier for me to learn new things.
[...] is a very interesting discussion going on over at Sasha Sydoruk’s blog. The signal to noise ratio is surprisingly high for the [...]
Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?…
Why are there so few startups that use ASP.NET? Is it the cost of tools? Hosting cost? Restrictive licensing? Or maybe ASP.NET became “the van” of web development. Safe, bulky and definitely not sexy….
Jakob Petsovits wrote:
> As for Rhonda’s comment – I for myself don’t understand how
> you can mark proprietary, non-standard software as BAD and
> at the same time use OS X. Perhaps it’ll come to me one time.
My statement was not related to operating systems but the choice of technology on which you build your business. Why people prefer PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, etc. over ASP.NET.
I happen to use OS X since it is built upon and around open source software and open standards. The proprietary parts are excellent and state of the art technology. A compelling desktop environment on top of a solid UNIX foundation, including all the software I need for web development. Simply the best tool for the job I’m doing.
And if I’m bored of Apple, I can move over to a Linux box, check out my project and work from there.
I believe one of the key factors is that the open source community is still fairly young in the .net community. A large percentage of open source resources are contributed by corporations. Alot of large corporations are using windows & .net and still using enterprise systems and paying enterprise prices. As these companies become more aware and educated about open source and also as the community evolves the quality and the quantity of the open source .net projects will accelerate and this will in turn allow the innovators with zero resources to take the systems provided and do something cool with it.
Here is our experience as a bootstrap startup using ASP.NET
Blog link
In a nutshell I think the reasons are cultural; it’s a fine option for a budget operation.
[...] Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET? – If you checkout the new startups on TechCrunch, it seems like every new startup is something Linux based and is not ASP.NET. And I really want to know why. [...]
In my opinion ASP.NET is just becoming sexy since v2.0. I see more people jumping on the ASP.NET train every day. Give it some more time, I’m sure we will see plenty of new ASP.NET Startups in the near future.
Andreas
How about Financify – http://www.financify.com built with express editions. 100% .NET
I’m developing a HUGE startup at the moment in ASP.NET – RateThatSong – will be online shortly [a month maybe] to join the list
There are quite a few cool .Net-based startups in Toronto, including our own http://www.wildapricot.com – membership management and registration system.
When .NET becomes serious about developing web content, then it’ll be taken seriously for start ups.
But take web parts for example, each web part delivers a nesting of 3, unusable and invalid tables.
In the ASP.NET forums, the answer is to go write and manage adapters.
Rather than MSFT just delivering the same in a division that contains a table, or a division that contains a definition list, etc …
… meaning, when MSFT is serious about rendering clean markup, then those involved in start-ups will be serious considering about using it as a solution.
I don’t know about the cost most people describe here. Most companies have a windows server where I worked at, even some unix oriented companies. Hosting, I don’t know if you can get any cheaper than that, most hosting these days are cheap period.
.NET is one platform and multi-languages based. If you want to talk about cost, one can easily find a .NET developer over others. On top of it, C# developer can easily program a VB.NET program without re-code nor study much. The flexibility in human resource is a huge cost advantage if you ask me.
As for ASP.NET is not HTML compliant, I personally don’t know any frameworks that go as far as ASP.NET. PHP? Java? These frameworks don’t even spits out html unless human tells it to. It depends on the developer who is coding it.
Very easy! I’ve been developing in ASP.NET for 2 years and I know now what I miss.
In ASP.NET everything in my opinion is chaotic, you don’t have the same approach to developing apps with every new project. In Rails and Django you know where everything goes and why. In ASP.NET some do it like you do and others differently. Enterprise Lib from MS is not integrated into ASP.NET right away, you have to download it and learn extra. It seems like they are correcting the initial mistake of not including it straight away. Later they shipped MS Flow-something and some web automation package which no one I know wants to learn. It is so because they cannot give you 10 points how you will benefit. It’s all propaganda.
Now with Rails and Django you have everything structured, community driven and open source. When you look for hosting in such solutions your hosting provider doesn’t limit your account to 3 websites because MS tells him to buy a new license.
Take a look at http://www.djangoproject.com !
In Django you’ve got:
- dynamic language called Python (ASP.NET in IronPyton is not ready and it is not a mainstream solution) that has many great features f.e. if(2
Why we chose ASP.NET to run our startup…
Sasha Sydoruk asks, “Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?”
Well I’m not sure if we’re considered cool enough, but we choose ASP.NET over Java for a variety of reasons.
ASP.NET is easier to setup and deploy
Since …
[...] read “Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?”, he asked: But what puzzles me is that not too many people use ASP.NET to create cool products. [...]
It takes a long period of time to develop with .NET in my opinion. Getting prototypes out the door with something like Rails, then bootstrapping as you go along seems to be the norm. look at Twitter, and the recent falling-apart-at-the-seams for evidence.
Check out http://www.pikum.com. We decided early on to use .NET for our site (.NET 3.5) because of the productivity gains and ease of use. I’ve developed in PHP and RoR before and just found that the VS IDE is stronger. But that’s my personal experience – I have a feeling that Eclipse or another IDE would make more sense to another developer.
But there are more and more startups using .NET.
For me it’s all to do with HTTP and HTML.
Ruby on Rails was built with the goal of making perfect HTML (and other web formats) and working with HTTP not against it.
ASP.NET is built to suit .NET developers who have been building winforms and don’t understand HTTP or HTML and it tries to encapsulate both of these and fails.
“If you are a new startup, you have only one shot at it, so you really want to use the best tools available.”
You have answered your own question.
Mine is using ASP.NET 3.5: http://www.onlinebudget.co.za.
Most startups are done by college kids and most universities don’t use MicroSoft products.
I would have chosen JSP\PHP if it was 5 years ago, because I wasn’t skilled in MS Technologies.
I am using ASP.NET for my site, and I am loving it.
Most college kids are not equipped with the .NET skills, that’s why they choose open source over MS.NET.
I have worked on both PHP and ASP.NET, and I don’t see anything cool about open source, I like organized programming, that’s why I chose ASP.NET over PHP.
Everything else tonnyben says may be correct (although I don’t for a seconf believe that Yahoo! is running primarily on PHP), but to say that “Development tools for .NET is not as appealing as developers expect” is evidence that they guy has never worked with Visual Sudio 2005. Ridiculously uninformed statement.
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