jeremymorgan

As a developer with "one foot in each boat" I keep a keen eye on both Linux based open source and .Net based open source.

One of things I'm saying to myself often in the last year or so is "wow, not only are they catching up here, but exceeding the Linux movement in some areas" but the problem is... few people are noticing.

I feel like some of these die hard PHP/Rails/Python etc developers have a dim view of the ASP.Net stack because of biases toward Microsoft itself and outdated information. Many open source coders simply have no idea what kind of giant strides the ASP team has taken in the last few years.

I know big enterprise is loaded with .Net developers but the youth just coming out of school and the startup scene on the West Coast is still avoiding it, and I think ASP.Net is off the radar with a lot of them. Is this something you guys think about, and are they are any plans to try to push harder to educate developers and get into that mainstream dev culture again?

Microsoft is partnering with Xamarin officially and I have no inside information whatsoever but if I had to guess they're going to let Xamarin do their thing because they're good at it.

As someone who tries very hard to be immersed in the culture side, I can tell you that more people are noticing than they did before. It's still marginalized but existing .Net developers are thrilled with the way things have gone lately and enthusiasm is rising fast. People like me are advocating (for no pay!) and pushing the product because it's an awesome thing to be a part of.

A small scale indicator is the PADNUG meeting you spoke at last week which set an attendance record. In my opinion that enthusiasm was drawn from you speaking there ( we all know what to expect ) and the fact that Visual Studio 2013 is amazing, and the strides being made by the ASP.Net group are incredible. Every .Net developer I know right now is excited and proud to be a part of it. There was a time not so long ago that I couldn't exactly say that.

Personally I think it can and will catch on with more people. I don't worry about the ASP.Net group losing momentum in what they're doing, I worry about the uppers ( people above ScottGu for instance ) giving up on it too quickly. As long as your teams have that backing and keep pushing like this it will be very hard to ignore "those .Net coders".

It's amazing how things change isn't it? For me I noticed it started with the creation of the .Net framework. Suddenly MS was tearing down some walls and really inviting developers in because they realized the key to survival in the industry was the developers.

It seems like things are only getting better, and you can really see the culture of the company (I'm observing from the outside) showing more and more respect for the developer. The attitude really seems to be "here's everything you need, now go build some cool stuff. If you need more, tell us or add it yourself!". Definitely not the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s.