Lozol And Lasix
From the first day we started Docstoc people have been asking me “why .Net”. I’m being asked this by technologies, of course, but also from other, non-tech people like private investors, VCs, SEO experts, marketing guys, potential hires, partners, and any random guests that just happen to stop by and say hi to Jason (of course…). Thank God my 9 year old son hasn’t asked me that yet…
I think it became a “style question” that make people look like they know/care/understand such as “what is your business model?” or “what is your current runway?” or “what do you think about the effects of the economy on high-tech?”. But unlike these questions, that try to understand something, the “why .Net?” is a charged question. What people are really asking is “why not X” where X can be anything but a Microsoft technology, lozol and lasix. This X can be PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, or even Java. Man, sometimes I'd rather say we developed the site in Assembly and I’m sure I’d get less raised eyebrows.
Well, Lasix and potassium citrate, seriously why .Net?
After all, it’s a Microsoft product and, as we all know, Microsoft is all about world domination and the end of free and open source software as we know it. Basically Microsoft is evil and we should avoid its technology at all cost, not even touch it with a stick. Why pay money for something that suppose to be free. The whole notion of a company trying to make money from selling software makes me sick.
Lozol and lasix, Ok, enough with the sarcasm. Let’s talk seriously.
Our job as technology leaders (CTOs, CIOs, and other fancy titles) is to find and implement technology solutions for world/business problems. That’s it. We are not politicians. We should not have hidden agendas. The concept of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) VS, lozol and lasix. Microsoft must change. We need to choose the right technology just as we choose the right people. Can you imagine group of CTOs that hire only white developers vs. group of CTOs that hire only black developers? It is clear to that the way we thought since the 90s must change. The walls between selecting only ONE side of the technology fence MUST end.
The reason we all choose side is very simple which it is the answer I give to the “why .Net? Lozol and lasix, ” question. All startups in the history were developed using the technologies that the CTO knew and liked. Very simple, nothing more. Everything else is silly rationalization. I’ve seen many examples of successful startups built in PHP, Java, ASP.Net, lasix natural replacement, CGI, ROR, and many others. All scale, all run fast, all are successful, lozol and lasix. Startups rarely fail because they used one technology vs. another. They mostly fail because they run out of money.
Starting Docstoc I’ve decided to break the walls, which I was part of. I’ve decided we will use the right technology for the right solution, regardless of the source. Although we use .Net for the platform and the site, we use MySQL as the database (yeah, not SQL Server), MemCached for caching, Lucene for full text search, and other open source technologies. Most of these had a matching Microsoft technology but it was simply not as good or just as good.
Last, let’s talk money. Can someone please tell me which company is spending more on hardware, software, license, hosting, traffic, Lungs fluid lasix how long, storage, and support, MySpace or Facebook. Is one more successful than the other because of the technology they use?
I rest my case.
Alon
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First Comment! Yeah! I feel like a tech geek!
In all seriousness though, is that question even relevant anymore? Especially with services such as DocStoc, FaceBook, and others that live and breath online only and not on the user’s desktop. Ten years ago, when software resided on a company’s server and had to be maintained by the company’s internal staff, that question had some relevance because it determined the type of people that need to be hired/trained to maintain the system. But today, who cares? What companies like DocStoc are doing is selling a service and not software or systems or hardware. The guarantee that DocStoc makes to its users is that the service will be reliable and available. These two things have more to do with the hardware that it is running on and the bandwidth than the language or platform on which the service is built. .Net is as reliable (if not more so) than other open source platforms.
The key for me is that companies or users that are using hosted services (which is essentially what sites like DocStoc, Scribd, LinkedIn, and others are) are not buying software. They are buying a service. To me it is the same as bringing in a plumber to service the pipes in your house. You do not care if the plumber learned on the job or went to plumbing school. You simple care that it fixes the problem and services you correctly. Granted, that is not always the case. If you need a lawyer or a doctor, you generally care about where they got their education and which hospitals they did their residency in, but I equate that to purchasing an ERP system. In that case, you do care about whether or not it uses SQL Server or MySQL. But do you really care what language it is written in? Even Siebel used to be written in VB and used ASP.NET for its “web” interface. And this was the number one ERP system in the world.
Lets face it, every platform has its strong points and weak points. But that is irrelevant to the end user. As you have said Alon, a perfect example is MySpace and Facebook. Two companies using two very different platforms and yet very successful.
Guess what the next question will be? Why did you develop your mobile application for the iPhone vs. the Android Phone… More on that later…
Jim
Ditto.
nYzySC Thanks for good post
Nice Post, Alon.
.. Every second is crucial when running a startup and given the small differences between the scalability and flexibility of the different technologies, there should be a little debate on which one to use and this post acts as an exact guide on which one to chose and why.. 
In startups, one has to deliver the maximum in a minimum amount of time and resources and that holds true with respect to every aspect of a startup(technology, marketing, finance etc etc).
In that spirit, If the technology lead is not comfortable with the technology he is using then open source wont make much sense to him
Hi Alon! .Net and Coldfusion are the 2 Server Applications that are pre-compiled so they do not require interpreter that PHP requires so are therefore faster (how much and under what circurstances not certain). So with this and the volume of documents in your database, perhaps .Net isn’t such a bad choice after all! Nice Blog!
-Mark
I have problems viewing your blog properly in the latest version of Opera. Looks good in IE and Firefox however.
Nice post, nice blog, I was searching for this nowadays, thank you. I found this site on erp : http://www.mb.com.tr/eng/
This is just my opinion as a developer, this fight boils down to this:
graphical user interface: Windows vs. X Window ? winner Windows.
document processinging: MS Office vs. Open Office ? winner Windows
shell: PowerShell vs. bash or tc shell ? winner Linux, Linux, Linux.
scripting: batch vs. bash scripts or myriad of Linux scripting options ? winner Linux, Linux, Linux.
tools like grep, find, awk, pipes help so much. The windows counterpart of these utilities are very awkward.
scheduling Scheduled Tasks vs. cron ? winner tie.
application layer network protocol support:
scp: winner Linux
ssh: winner Linux
ftp: winner Linux
telnet: tied (although it is a better user experience on Linux)
remote administration:
remote desktop connection vs. ssh ? winner Linux
remote usage: (for example, using a remote system to perform ui related tasks such writing a document)
remote desktop connection vs. x windows ? winner windows
task management:
depends:
process management:
task manager vs. Linux process management ? winner Linux (very important for production deployed applications with many nodes)
ui related processes:
task manager vs. Linux process management ? winner windows (not so important for a production system with many nodes)
Overall, I find Windows suitable for document writing, media viewing, and web browsing. However, I find the tools necessary for administrating a group of machines, their processes, and networking support much stronger in Linux.
I believe a good system can be architected for both Windows and Linux, however, I truly believe that enterprise Linux systems really shine in management, administration, and diagnosis.
I believe that if there are many nodes in your architecture, you’ll have an easier time in the long run in one built on Linux.
Finally, the java platform runs very well on windows or Linux, however, .NET doesn’t. Although .NET provides a very nice platform for writing applications, the fact that the only good distributions of it are available only for the Windows platform really hurts it in my opinion. Also, I disagree with the issue of costs. If there is a time when you truly need to scale out, and you built your system on open-source, you’re going to save so much money.
Regardless, this is not about good vs. . evil in my opinion. If you know .NET and Windows better, then perhaps that is the winning edge you need to get to market faster.
By the way, this list would be different if we included MacOS, which I recommend as a client or desktop system. However, my argument is based on production systems.
Keep up the good work!
I appreciate your site greatly. Will read more. Keep up to great writing on it. Gracias