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Is Microsoft 'Reaping the Rewards' From Open-Sourcing Its .NET Core? (infoworld.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the embracing-and-extending dept.

An anonymous reader quote InfoWorld: Two years ago Microsoft did the unthinkable: It declared it would open-source its .NET server-side cloud stack with the introduction of .NET Core... Thus far, the move has paid off. Microsoft has positioned .NET Core as a means for taking .NET beyond Windows. The cross-platform version extends .NET's reach to MacOS and Linux...

Developers are buying in, says Scott Hunter, Microsoft partner director program manager for .NET. "Forty percent of our .NET Core customers are brand-new developers to the platform, which is what we want with .NET Core," Hunter says. "We want to bring new people in." Thanks in considerable part to .NET Core, .NET has seen a 61% uptick in the number of developers engaged with the platform in the past year.
The article includes an interesting quote from Microsoft-watching analyst Rob Sanfilippo. "It could be argued that the technology generates indirect revenue by incenting the use of Azure services or Microsoft developer tools."

19 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Re:not quite correct by NotInHere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reality is that javascript is the universal language at the moment of 'get stuff done'

    It is, but javascript is a gigantic mess, and therefore shouldn't be used for teaching, just like C++ (which is a mess too, but a smaller one).

  2. what's so "unthinkable"? by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Two years ago Microsoft did the unthinkable:

    I don't see what's so "unthinkable" about it; Microsoft has been pretty honest and well-behaved when it comes to .NET since the start: they created open standards, made legal commitments not to assert any patents, and have supported Mono. That is... unlike that other company and its platform.

    1. Re:what's so "unthinkable"? by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Microsoft has been pretty honest and well-behaved when it comes to .NET since the start:

      That's pretty amusing considering .Net started because they got sued for forking Java, so they make a Java clean-room clone and went with that.

      That said .Net has gone it's own way and Microsoft has been much better behaved lately. But to say it's been so "since the start" of .Net is a massive retcon.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    2. Re:what's so "unthinkable"? by gtall · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sun's problem with GUI applications is that they didn't understand them. They had a big machine mentality, not small PC mentality. They never caught on that GUIs are quite like realtime apps, and response at the keyboard and screen really matters. Their notion of creating and freeing "graphic objects" was guaranteed to make GUIs look like they were swimming in molasses.

    3. Re:what's so "unthinkable"? by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      OOXML.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    4. Re:what's so "unthinkable"? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Java is probably one of the best, on par with Qt, 'technologies' for GUI applications, and that since far over a decade.
      You must be living under a rock. (Or must have a pretty weird idea how 'good gui programming' looks like.

      I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java, and Sun was confirming how dishonest and untrustworthy they were with their lawsuit.
      That is bollocks. M$ did the embrace, extend, extinguish tactics with Java by "adding" unportable extensions. Java programs written for the MS platform where no longer 'compile once run everywhere' hence Sun sued: rightfully, both in legal as in moral sense.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  3. Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The first thing I thought about the "Oracle is going to start shaking down developers" article from yesterday was that it was a boon to C#.

    -scott

    If you flee from Oracle into the warm embrace of Microsoft, expecting everything will be fine, you deserve everything you are going to get. We'll read about it on slashdot in a few years: "Microsoft demands licensing fees from .NET developers", and some of us will be thinking "phew, I dodged another bullet there".

    But hey, if decades of experience with a company means nothing to you, by all means lock yourself into Microsoft's walled garden.

  4. Is Microsoft reaping benefits here? by mmell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sure hope so. They're a corporate, profit-making entity, a fact which they've never attempted to hide or disavow. If there is a benefit to be had from open source, they'll take full advantage of that benefit - hopefully to the mutual benefit of their bottom line and the open source community.

  5. int vs float vs double by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    look, if you use javascript for teaching then you will get pupils graduating without knowing the difference between basic data types - or really anything. even basic would be better, really, for teaching basics.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    1. Re:int vs float vs double by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Wouldn't you say that the same problems wrt. type-lessness applies to Python? It not, why?

      No, because Python has strong typing and Javascript doesn't.

      Python: 1 + "2" => error

      Javascript: 1 + "2" => "12"

    2. Re:int vs float vs double by murdocj · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Definitely. If javascript is the first language, people have no clue how to structure things, what types are, that an object is more than a collection of stuff... it's a great glue language if you want to bang out a few lines, it's a disaster if you want to write solid production code. Just look at all the "add-ons" like typescript that adds in concepts like type checking that you get for free in any decent language.

  6. Re:not quite correct by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No. Hell no. Higher education is about teaching concepts and proper practices. A gutted mess of a language simply isn't appropriate for good education. Python is an equally 'easy' language but has far superior constructs for abstraction, sensible error handling , structured and OO design, and so forth. Its duck typing goes easy on new students, but doesn't fall into the traps offered by languages like Javascript or PHP's weak typing.

    Beyond that Java (or C#, the two are almost interchangeable here, and with Java rapidly becoming radioactive thanks to oracle, it might be the better choice) , C/C++, Clojure and Haskell all provide proper computer science training whilst still remaining job market viable.

    And if someone is unlucky enough to end up in a javascript shop, well theres always whisky and the blues.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  7. Re:not quite correct by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the videogame industry at least, C# is extremely popular for tool development and scripting, while C++ is largely used for engine and game code. It's a clean, well constructed language, is similar enough to C++ to train up programmers easily, and integrates well with native C++ code. JavaScript is occasionally used as a scripting solution and for web integration (or web games, of course), but it's not quite as popular for general purpose use, from what I've seen. Lua is still used for runtime scripting as well, while various other languages like Python or Java contribute in minor ways with tools and automation.

    So, once again, a language pissing match is completely pointless unless you specify what you're actually developing, and how it will be used and deployed. How often do I have to say this? Different languages, different strengths.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  8. Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We're 16 years into C# and 14 years into .NET, and they've gone from "will not sue" licensing to full blown opensource and multiplatform, with alternate GPL'd implementations if you don't like Microsoft's. How long do we need to wait before you'll move beyond blind religious zeal?

  9. Re:not quite correct by DrXym · · Score: 4, Interesting
    No. Javascript is a terrible teaching language. It doesn't enforce programming discipline in any way, doesn't care program structure or types, is grossly inefficient, doesn't actually DO anything by itself because it is a scripting language (the program it runs against has that functionality), and is all around just a bad language. Yes we're stuck with it because it's used by browsers and is convenient in other places like NodeJS but it's not a teaching language unless you want to turn out another generation of Visual Basic programmers.

    At the very least it would be better to teach in Typescript that addresses some of the shortcomings in JS, but then someone would moan that it's Microsoft again. But better yet, programming would be taught on a structured, forgiving, well designed standalone language. There are plenty to choose from. Scripting and other concepts would be introduced once the basics were learned.

  10. Re:Mono by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mono is still a patent trap

    Have you been saying that for over 12 years? That's a long time to keep calling that the sky is falling. In that time, Microsoft have made good on their promise not to sue regarding patents and Mono. They have also acquired Xamarin and then contributed the Mono Project to the .NET Foundation (the independent organisation incorporated by Microsoft to foster OSS development with .NET).

    What more can they do to shut up the nay-sayers who keep crying that the big bad wolf is going to sue us if we use Mono?

  11. Re:not quite correct by hvdh · · Score: 4, Informative

    The reality is that javascript is the universal language at the moment of 'get stuff done'.

    Only if your platform is a browser. These are the things i lately worked on, and Javascript would be of no use in any of them:
    - Embedded board doing hard realtime IO signals (100us response time) and Ethernet/IP communication on a 8bit CPU with 4KB RAM
    - Windows device driver for a special PCIe card receiving continuous 80MB/s data from an image sensor into system RAM.
    - soft real-time image sensor processing the stream data with latency below 3ms: interpolate dead pixels, normalize gain, apply 2d band stop filter
    - soft real-time image post-processing on 60MB/s stream, with latency below 20ms: illuminated area & motion detection, spatial and temporal noise reduction, multi-resolution non-linear detail enhancement processing, adjust contrast & brightness

    Above processing must run on a desktop quad-core with max 40% CPU load.
    It required manual threading and hand-written vector code (SSE intrinsics) to reach the performance.

  12. Re:Microsoft is positioned for success with c# by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/9675/is-unity-engine-written-in-monoc-or-c.html

    "The Unity runtime is written in C/C++. [...] The editor is built on the Unity runtime and additionally includes editor-specific C/C++ binaries."
    --AngryAnt (Emil Johansen), Ex Unity Technologies

    "Unity is written in C++, with the following exceptions: [...] There is hardly any functionality in UnityEngine.dll, the only thing it does is relay your c#/javascript calls into the C++ part of Unity. Without the C++ part there is nothing."
    --Lucas Meijer, Unity

  13. Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We're 16 years into C# and 14 years into .NET, and they've gone from "will not sue" licensing to full blown opensource and multiplatform, with alternate GPL'd implementations if you don't like Microsoft's. How long do we need to wait before you'll move beyond blind religious zeal?

    You are actually ready to trust the company that gave us Windows 10, then? And that might next year very well decide that _all_ Windows applications need to go through the Windows Store?

    Windows 10 has shown us there is no limit to the level of idiocy they are willing to commit to. And if you believe your future is in good hands with them, I can only wish you good luck.