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Original post by d000hg [...]I can't imagine that real-world development in Ruby/Python is more than a single-digit percentage of jobs out there. It's very 'cool' but I wouldn't want to stake my career on it. What do you do that everyone is using these?[...]

I can't imagine that fun jobs are more than a single-digit percentage of jobs out there, either. =-)

I use Python professionally (along with C and C++). I can confirm that there are not many jobs doing what I do, but, at the same time, there are positions open.

I didn't like even the idea of python (whitespace matters? blasphemy!) before I started at my current job. After trying it out for the third or fourth time, I came to love how simple it made writing simple programs, and with modules like gmpy, numpy, scipy, and sympy, even the most resource-intensive algorithms I wanted to implement were easily made fast enough.

We (the SlimDX team) are doing fun and crazy things in .NET all the time. You should come hang around #gamedev more often.

Like everyone said, enterprise sucks, but OTOH enterprise is where the majority of jobs in programming are.
As for the opensource .NET I agree but that's why I'm enthusiastic about mono project and it's child projects like cocoa framework binding, monolight, monodroid/monotouch, monodevelop, Gtk#, mono REPL etc.
Hell there are even console ports for Mono (PS3/Wii IIRC) !

Also there are "lightweight" web frameworks that go around the "bloated" ASP.NET architecture. Manos is one (although pretty new). I pretty much agree with the authors points, specifically :

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Web frameworks really don’t need to be that complicated. For the most part websites get requests and return either HTML or JSON. Is this really that complicated a task?

and

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C# is a great programming language. It allows for clean, expressive code. It bends nicely to your programming style. I think most people that have actually used C# find the language quite enjoyable. The core class libraries in .NET and Mono are very nicely polished. For the most part the API is clean, discoverable and easy to use. The API documentation on msdn.com is also top notch. .NET is also really nice for multicore/multiprocessor programming. Often all you need to do to take advantage of all of a machines cores is use the AsParallel function.

And looking at the Rx (reactive framework), F# and DLR it seems there will be more fun with the .NET in the future.
But I agree it's harder to be excited about R&D .NET technologies when there is 99% chance that no community patches/forks will go upstream. OTOH it's positive that there is a well funded/dedicated team behind those projects.

RedDrake: Agree completely. I love C#, but tying myself to C# is a lonely existence.

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Original post by Mike.Popoloski We (the SlimDX team) are doing fun and crazy things in .NET all the time. You should come hang around #gamedev more often.

this is actually an issue that I've noticed recently. I don't hang out in the Lounge or #gamedev anywhere near as much as I used to. Sad capn_midnight is very sad :(

One of the interesting side effects of this is that it might mean I also leave Windows, at least on my laptops (I have too many games from Steam on the desktop). If I'm not doing .NET, then I won't need/be able to use Visual Studio. I've been doing some Python, and a lot of AJAX/HTML5 stuff lately, which I typically do in Vim, even when I'm on Windows. So transitioning to something else wouldn't be that big of a deal (and I'm sorely feeling the "not at home" feeling of Python and Vim outside of a *NIX environment).

Microsoft have Connect, a portal to take suggestions, bug fixes, tweaks, etc. They can choose to accept, ignore, close, or do whatever they want. I really can't see how large open source projects are truly any different. So you can send code, maybe tweak a few lines - if you're lucky you might get it integrated. In reality, a handful of people act as guardians to accept/reject/tweak/change/remove/ignore any code, comments or suggestions people have.

I accept that Microsoft are more closed than other groups, but they have plans for architectures and platforms that must align with their commercial interests. They do, however, at least preview code and ideas to others on Codeplex (or MS Research). Think of WFS, a SQL-based file system that was cited as a key feature for Vista, tested and then dropped in favour of using the tech to augment the ADO.NET libraries and eventually influence aspects of the Entity Framework. If this was a "true" OS project, would we really see such architectural planning? I doubt it.

I like to think of MS's open-sourced offerings as community betas and are valuable. You can influence the actual code in ways if you really want, but you must accept that most of the ideas come from their research labs and employees. If you want to be part of an open source movement then a proprietary platform such as .NET is probably not for you.

One thing to consider though, do you truly have a great influence over many so-called open-source projects? Maybe in the early days you might, but if you hit it when it's got some traction, I really doubt it.

It's really not about having influence over the open source project itself. I fully admit that I will probably never contribute to any major open source project. So in that regard, the relative open-ness or closed-ness of Microsoft is not the issue, I personally couldn't care less if Microsoft were open source. It's what other developers think about it that matters. Because of MS's closed nature, they've driven away* a lot of passionate programmers. Now, I personally think that's a silly reason, 'cuz they're equally unlikely to ever contribute to a major OS project either. But they have their reasons, and that's up to them. I just think there is much more likely of a chance that I will find new things to learn and people to learn from--expanding things, not replacing things--outside of the MS tech chain.


*this is certainly an open issue, but at the very least you have to admit that there is very little tech press on Microsoft related tech.

.NET is definitely not used only for enterprise projects, or even mainly for them, in my experience. If anything, Java is the "enterprise language" but both it and C# are used in loads of exciting projects, including games, as well as loads of fairly typical smaller non-enterprise solutions.

I don't think chasing exciting projects based on language/technology is a great route to satisfaction.

My company has finally been convinced of the benefits of .NET, and has put me on the team that will eventually convert all of our products over to C#. To me, it's very exciting to be in .NET world. I can't ever imagine leaving it.



Now, that being said, WCF makes me a very sad panda. It was ridiculously over-engineered and I can't stand it. But other than that, pretty much everything in .NET is golden.

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Original post by Mithrandir My company has finally been convinced of the benefits of .NET, and has put me on the team that will eventually convert all of our products over to C#. To me, it's very exciting to be in .NET world. I can't ever imagine leaving it. Now, that being said, WCF makes me a very sad panda. It was ridiculously over-engineered and I can't stand it. But other than that, pretty much everything in .NET is golden.

Interesting, I misread your post thinking you said WPF (since I hear that is the overengineered part of .NET). I've heard nothing but good things about WCF. Hmmm. Also, out of curiosity, do you think the AJAX Control Toolkit is better than jQuery? Because I've just about have had it with the ACT and am about to start exploring jQuery more thoroughly.