[TampaDeveloper]

I've officially moved on from Java to .net development job. Since I make my money as a developer, my Powerbook is no longer an effective development tool. Sigh. I'm too in love with it to sell it, so all I can do is complain!!! Its a tough world. Steve needs to bite the bullet and go beg Bill to port the .net framework to OS X.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by TampaDeveloper:
I've officially moved on from Java to .net development job. Since I make my money as a developer, my Powerbook is no longer an effective development tool. Sigh. I'm too in love with it to sell it, so all I can do is complain!!! Its a tough world. Steve needs to bite the bullet and go beg Bill to port the .net framework to OS X.

...or send some engineers to the Mono project. MS would be idiots if they ported .NET

[TampaDeveloper]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
...or send some engineers to the Mono project. MS would be idiots if they ported .NET

I'm not sure I agree with that... Microsoft wants to compete with Java and Linux... They don't really have to worry so much about Apple because Apple will always be premium + proprietary. So they can claim cross platform support to compete with Java without having to give a boost to Linux. I think its a win win.

[Arkham_c]

I have never, ever had a request to do .NET development. I work in a large company (25 million+ customers, about to be 45 million), and we do all development in C++ or Java on UNIX (Solaris, AIX and occasionally HP/UX). There are NO Windows servers other than Outlook/Exchange. It was the same when I worked at CNN/CNN.com (all Solaris), and at the other two jobs I had at small companies (6 UNIX platforms at one, all-Linux at the other).

I'm sure people are doing Windows development. I know they must be with all of the hype and hysteria. I just never see it. I'm appalled when I'm doing a consulting project and the client's hosting company is running Windows on their web server (are they crazy?). I immediately suggest the get a different hosting company. Even simple stuff like PHP has problems on Windows that do not manifest on Linux/UNIX/OSX.

I had a job request for a VB/ODBC app last week, but I turned it down. It's just not worth it to me to deal with an inferior language on an inferior platform -- the chances of producing anything not inferior in that situation are small indeed.

I'm sticking with Java, Python, PHP, C/C++, Perl, or whatever other tools I need for real development. I have yet to see anyone asking to use .NET in the enterprise, and I doubt that will change any time soon.

[TampaDeveloper]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
I have never, ever had a request to do .NET development. I work in a large company (25 million+ customers, about to be 45 million), and we do all development in C++ or Java on UNIX (Solaris, AIX and occasionally HP/UX). There are NO Windows servers other than Outlook/Exchange. It was the same when I worked at CNN/CNN.com (all Solaris), and at the other two jobs I had at small companies (6 UNIX platforms at one, all-Linux at the other).

I'm sure people are doing Windows development. I know they must be with all of the hype and hysteria. I just never see it. I'm appalled when I'm doing a consulting project and the client's hosting company is running Windows on their web server (are they crazy?). I immediately suggest the get a different hosting company. Even simple stuff like PHP has problems on Windows that do not manifest on Linux/UNIX/OSX.

I had a job request for a VB/ODBC app last week, but I turned it down. It's just not worth it to me to deal with an inferior language on an inferior platform -- the chances of producing anything not inferior in that situation are small indeed.

I'm sticking with Java, Python, PHP, C/C++, Perl, or whatever other tools I need for real development. I have yet to see anyone asking to use .NET in the enterprise, and I doubt that will change any time soon.

As an antidote to that, I find the programming model for ASP.NET far superior to JSP, and I did JSP for three and a half years so I was no amature. Also, statistics are now showing a higher than average failure rate for projects developed in Java. I've heard that some companies have banned Java for future development projects.

I think all envoronments have their plusses and minuses. If you're talking about a mixed environment (which most big companies are), or companies that cater to big companies, then Java is your meal ticket. For small to medium business, where turnaround time is critical to your being able to "beat the big boys", then Microsoft is your meal ticket. Its difficult to make the blanket assertion that one platform is inferior to another.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by TampaDeveloper:
As an antidote to that, I find the programming model for ASP.NET far superior to JSP, and I did JSP for three and a half years so I was no amature. Also, statistics are now showing a higher than average failure rate for projects developed in Java. I've heard that some companies have banned Java for future development projects.

I think all envoronments have their plusses and minuses. If you're talking about a mixed environment (which most big companies are), or companies that cater to big companies, then Java is your meal ticket. For small to medium business, where turnaround time is critical to your being able to "beat the big boys", then Microsoft is your meal ticket. Its difficult to make the blanket assertion that one platform is inferior to another.

I have given up on JSP for any job that doesn't explicitly require it. JSP is really bad (as is ASP) because it does not enforce MVC separation. Even with a middle tier like Struts, you still end up with places where people mix code with presentation logic. I greatly prefer some of the other templating languages like Velocity for that reason (plus, Velocity is faster and can be developed more quickly).

I don't personally know of any company who has banned java. It's such a nice language, and so rich when compared to its competitors. We're slowly phasing out all the Perl FastCGI stuff in favor of Java Servlets + Velocity. I don't tend to believe "statistics" -- as I'm sure you know, with the proper funding statistics will say whatever the client wants them to say. As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

For all the 30-40 small-to-medium businesses I consult for, PHP is the solution I usually suggest. The reason is simple -- no matter what hosting company they have or plan to choose, PHP will be there. It doesn't matter if it's Windows, Linux, BSD, or Sun, you can expect to find PHP and probably MySQL. I've done about a dozen sites for clients with Windows hosting companies, and PHP always works for them. It's certainly not as clean as Java, but it gets the job done, and a saavy programmer can maintain MVC separation and some semblance of object-orientation.

[johnMG]

Arkham_c,

I'm sorry to be late to this thread, but I was hoping to ask
you (or anyone else reading) about a couple of your comments.

> We're slowly phasing out all the Perl FastCGI stuff in favor
> of Java Servlets + Velocity.

I'm curious: why? I'm learning Python at the moment, and Python
plus CGI seems such a nice simple solution. Doesn't Java servlets
add a whole new layer of complexity for you to deal with?

> I've done about a dozen sites for clients with Windows hosting
> companies, and PHP always works for them.

I'm a bit inexperienced here -- can you please tell the role of
this "hosting company"? Are they the ISP? Does the server reside
there (maybe for bandwidth reasons?)? Who maintains the server?
I guess I always just figured that a company gets a broadband
connection and puts up their own server on their own premises...(?)

Any pointers to where I can learn more about this stuff would of
course be appreciated. :)

Thanks.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by johnMG:
> We're slowly phasing out all the Perl FastCGI stuff in favor
> of Java Servlets + Velocity.

I'm curious: why? I'm learning Python at the moment, and Python
plus CGI seems such a nice simple solution. Doesn't Java servlets
add a whole new layer of complexity for you to deal with?
[/b]

It's actually the opposite. CGI is fine for really basic stuff. When i started web programming, CGI was all there was. I'm a big fan of Python (and Zope, which is an application server written in Python). But With Java containers and servlets, you get a whole new rich layer of capability. Things like true session management, database connection pooling, and real server failover make for compelling arguments, but there's also the fact that CGI is significantly SLOWER than a native interpreter running within the container. You can get that with mod_perl or mod_python, but it's just not the same, and the performance is not as good either.

I'm a bit inexperienced here -- can you please tell the role of
this "hosting company"? Are they the ISP? Does the server reside
there (maybe for bandwidth reasons?)? Who maintains the server?
I guess I always just figured that a company gets a broadband
connection and puts up their own server on their own premises...(?)

Many smaller businesses do not have their own data centers or T1/T3/OC3 lines. Instead they either co-locate a server or rent space on a server at hosting company. In some cases, this might be the company ISP, but that's not always the case. Typically these companies offer web server space, database instances, and one or more programming languages in which to develop web-based applications.

If you co-locate (put your own server in their data center) then you maintain the server. If you rent space on their server, then maintenance and availability is their responsibility. Most people rent space on a company server because it's cheaper and doesn't require on-staff server experts.

You can get broadband and put a server in your office, but the server performance and bandwidth will never match that of a hosting company (which typically will have 3 or more connections to OC3 data trunks for redundancy so network issues will never bring the site down).

[johnMG]

Thanks for the informative reply Arkham_c.

Ah, ok. I see. A hosting company may or may not also be an ISP -- if they are not, then they are leasing a big pipe from one.

My local ISP offers "domain hosting". Is this the same as the situation where an ISP is also acting as your hosting company? As features for this service (which is about $20/month), they list (among a few other things):
100 MB of Server Space
1 GB Data Transfer
Unlimited FTP
CGI Script Ability
Frontpage 2002 Server Extensions
Site Traffic Data Log Files
24/7 Customer Support


On a separate page, they also list that they offer co-location for about $100/month, 1 GB transfer, 8 IP's. I'm guessing that if you co-locate, you probably do most of your work via ssh, no? Hmm... it seems that co-location is way cheaper than having a big pipe come to your place of business...

[Brass]

Originally posted by johnMG:
Thanks for the informative reply Arkham_c.

Ah, ok. I see. A hosting company may or may not also be an ISP -- if they are not, then they are leasing a big pipe from one.

My local ISP offers "domain hosting". Is this the same as the situation where an ISP is also acting as your hosting company? As features for this service (which is about $20/month), they list (among a few other things):
100 MB of Server Space
1 GB Data Transfer
Unlimited FTP
CGI Script Ability
Frontpage 2002 Server Extensions
Site Traffic Data Log Files
24/7 Customer Support


On a separate page, they also list that they offer co-location for about $100/month, 1 GB transfer, 8 IP's. I'm guessing that if you co-locate, you probably do most of your work via ssh, no? Hmm... it seems that co-location is way cheaper than having a big pipe come to your place of business...

Local ISPs always charge a lot more for this kind of service that dedicated hosting services. You should be able to find something at least as good for under $10/month. I've just switched to one for $5.99 per month ($4.99 if you pay for a full year at a time).