Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Where's the N-ovation?

When was the last time someone took an open source project that originated in the .NET space and ported it to another language?  I might be clueless, but I can't think of a single time it's happened.

Is Microsoft losing the Alpha Geeks? The more relevant question is: Were they ever here?

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10 comments:

  1. fooMay 28, 2008 at 10:19 PM

    One word: Ninject

    ++Alan

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  2. Stevi DeterMay 28, 2008 at 10:34 PM

    Funny, I had just this conversation with a Java-only coworker about six months ago.

    "Hey! They have a Spring.NET!"

    "So, uh, when we gonna get something that started in .NET ported to Java?"

    "uh...."

    ReplyDelete
  3. MAGMay 29, 2008 at 7:37 AM

    Not sure its that straightforward. There is a lot of innovation, but its coming from Microsoft not its community - see: Generics (better implementation than Java), LINQ, and F#.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Matt BlodgettMay 29, 2008 at 8:30 AM

    @MAG

    Good point. LINQ is one of the few things I can think of that I'm proud of as a .NET developer and that people in other communities might be legitimately jealous of.

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  5. AnonymousMay 29, 2008 at 9:24 PM

    Haven't the alpha geeks left Java for Ruby some time ago?

    Soon they'll be leaving for something else (or already are - see the resurgence of functional programming languages)

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  6. AnonymousMay 30, 2008 at 6:03 AM

    Does Mono count?

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  7. AnonymousMay 30, 2008 at 1:15 PM

    I don't work much with MS dev tools any more, but isn't it true that the MS development world has always been more centralized? I.e. MS does all the innovation, and the developers just wait for it to come down the pipe? I'm not trying to insult .Net developers, I'm just thinking of what I saw when I *did* work in an MS environment. It seems to me that tools like NUnit etc. are just areas where MS has dropped the ball and developers have been forced to look elsewhere to pick up the slack.

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  8. Matt BlodgettMay 30, 2008 at 1:29 PM

    @Daniel

    Ooh, good call on Mono, but that's a different sort of animal.

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  9. Matt BlodgettMay 30, 2008 at 1:56 PM

    @Avdi

    You're pretty much dead-on. That's generally true of the .NET community I believe.

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  10. AnonymousJune 4, 2008 at 2:43 PM

    Is there really such a thing as Alpha Geek anymore? Given the depth of product that we must development and deploy now, is it even possible to 'Major' in one particular technology long enough to become the Alpha? Maybe its my biased opinion, having worked in consulting for so long.

    ReplyDelete

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