On May 26, 2008, at 4:42 AM, Mark Waser wrote:
There has been a large upswing in the number of MacOS laptops. At the same time, there has been an equally large reversal of the correlation with Unix-based back-ends. Macs are being picked up because of their engineering, power-up times, ease of use and coolness factor -- and the fact that they Terminal Services to work desktops just as well as any windows machine.
Where do you live, if you do not mind me asking? The preference for server environments is very much a local phenomenon. Using California as an example, in Los Angeles there is a strong preference for Windows systems, but in Silicon Valley you will find that Unix is pervasive.
.NET may be ubiquitous in abstract because it is associated with Windows, but if you actually look at some rather important tech centers like Silicon Valley, there is not a Windows server in sight. The dominance of Unix-based systems there is so complete that it is not even a contest any more. You are apparently under the impression that this is not true, but if you continue with that assumption you will systematically exclude a vast and very talented developer pool that has zero interest or experience developing in .NET even if they are using a Windows workstation. A lot of business in Europe specifically excludes .NET as a development target for similar pragmatic reasons. And developing .NET is going to suck on a non- Windows workstation, eliminating one of the major advantages you tout. To be honest, I do not know of anyone that uses a Mac that is using it for .NET development -- total impedance mismatch.
To use Silicon Valley as an example, C/C++, Java, and Python will give you about 90% coverage of the developer pool. The .NET languages are in the residue. In Bangalore, .NET is a major percentage of the developer pool. Which is most likely to usefully contribute to your project, programming languages aside? It sounds an awful lot like you are simply trying to rationalize your personal preference for programming language/environment.
And what is the value proposition of Java over any other language? It has no unique features. It's development is lagging. It's developers are defecting (again, look at the statistics). It's fragmenting just like Unix so it certainly isn't as portable as claimed.
The value proposition of Java is a deep pool of technically proficient hackers know it and it works on all the platforms many such people prefer. MacOS has a C/C++, Python, and Java development environment out of the box (among other less common languages), but no .NET. Linux has similar coverage out of the box. By selecting .NET you have tacitly excluded most developers in Silicon Valley, and a huge number in Europe and many other countries. Java casts a much wider net even if it is an inferior environment.
The language/environment is a secondary concern to the developer pool because you could develop this project in *any* language. The difference in overhead costs intrinsic to the environment are nominal. I don't like Java myself, but I think a better argument can be made for it *in this instance* relative to .NET because language features are not that important at the end of the day. If you were doing a closed shop project then .NET would be very arguably a superior choice.
If you hate Java, there are other environments with a better feature set *and* much broader portability. A popular one is C + Python, which allows you to combine very pretty syntactic sugar with unfettered performance and system access. My point is not that Java is better than .NET, but that .NET is a really poor choice if you are trying to rope in a large developer talent pool.
I dunno, the obsession with a very particular and narrow platform systems misplaced and inappropriate for a project like this. The goal is (hopefully) *not* to select a platform you like and then rationalize every other decision around that.
J. Andrew Rogers ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
