The coolest companies under the tree use .NET

Oh, and they all use .NET? Hmmm.

Huh? What does "Every company on our list has taken advantage of the .NET framework to bring their products and services to market, and it has contributed wildly (okay, merrily) to their success. " mean? Proof, other than taking this guy's word for it?

Every company I've been at has "harnessed the power of the Windows platform to bring their product to market" as most desktops run Windows. Does that mean anything?

And to top it off how surprising is it that the "top coolest companies in like the whole world" as listed by a Microsoftie are all ... what for it ... companies that use Microsoft products? I'm shocked, shocked!

OK, he forget most important of them all ePlatform. Last time I checked 408 area code is still part of valley unless Microsoft decided to remove us from valley.

Ramana: yeah, I'll get on him about that!!!

Somebody should throw a party for .NET crowd in the valley like Mike does for web 2.0 crowd.

Ramana: good idea!

Ruby on Rails isn't the only dynamic language web framework - there's also Seaside:

http://www.seaside.st/

which is available for both Squeak (open source) and VisualWorks (part of Cincom Smalltalk)

Come on guys - the author compares Ajax to Java and says Java is losing mindshare? Give me a break - they have nothing to do with each other. Ajax is completely language independent.

Several comments :

- it's hard to tell which company is there to change the world, and which is there only to be bought. Those going the 100% certified Microsoft way are digital whores.

- out of the listed companies, when .NET is used it's on the server. A lot of .NET devs out there are doing .NET on the client. Perhaps time to remind them one thing or two...

- most of those companies will either be bought (one or two perhaps will), or will go down the tube (most of them) because they are targeting a segment for which Microsoft gives away products and frameworks for free. Two examples of that are 1) the workflow company : Microsoft ships a beta of a workflow framework 2) the company that secures Office documents : Office ships IRM.

Blogreader - Dan'l Lewin was pretty clear in his post--they're taking advantage of the .NET Framework--not "using Excel for their spreadsheets."

anon - What in the world does "digital whores" mean? Choosing the Microsoft tools as a development platform is often simply about using powerful tools. It doesn't mean the company is bowing down to the almighty Lords of Redmond; it simply means that the company looked at the development toolkits out there and chose the one that fit their needs the best.

And, as far as your comment about "most will be bought or go down the tube." Yeah. Shocking. Guess what? Most new businesses are either bought or go down the tube. Choice of platform won't make you or break you. If you write a piece of software that competes squarely against any major company (for example, trying to write a new photo editor to compete against Photoshop), chances are you will lose. Microsoft is no different than any other major software developer in that regard.

The companies in this list have found a productive way to work with an industry leader. An important Microsoft executive is taking the time to shine the spotlight on a few particularly promising firms that are using his .NET technology. Tell me again: what's wrong with that?

Funny; show me a single open-source .NET appserver. Can't find any, right? Now look for open-source J2EE appservers. There are several that I can name off the top of my head: JBoss, Glassfish, and Geronimo/Gluecode to name three.

There are startups using .NET, but they aren't the majority, and those who chose to do so are buying themselves into a trap with expensive licenses and a locked-in platform.

I work in a large bank in the Commercial division. We've had one group of developers working in .NET since its inception. They have yet to see a problem with expensive licenses or had a problem with a "locked in" platform. Most of that kind of talk is simply a myth. Note: This one group has been so productive that we are switching everyone over to .NET. And we will combine .NET with SQL Server 2005 and IIS. They will replace java/perl, Apache, and mySQL. The .NET platform is simply to powerful and productive to ignore.

You're working at a large bank. A large, established bank would presumably have enough funds to purchase Windows licenses for servers and the necessary VS copies (yes, there are free Expresses, but no one's going to use those for professional development stuff). A startup needs funding to begin with; why waste precious VC money on Windows licenses unless one must?

Anonymous: The startup can grab ISV packs which'll cost about 2500$ to get the company up and running with all the dev tools and server bits they'll need. Toss in another 2500$ and they'll get all the MSDN stuff they need.

5000$ is not that much to get a 5-10 man shop up and running, even when bootstrapping.

Anonymous (and Jeremy) - my response was a bit too long for a comment. Follow the trackback above (#15, West Coast Grid) or just go to http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2005/12/good-...
Short answer: anonymous, you have no idea how cheap these tools are for startups.