Where is .Net?

[paul]

Everywhere there are lot of PHP, Ruby, Java ect , where is .Net? Why is .NET so under represented on the broader community sites ?

[kev woodman]

Because you have to pay more for the hosting and until recently you had to pay for the IDEs.

[sanderson]

You may know that right now the .NET is at early stage, and the details are still squeezing out by the Microsoft .NET team. But we can still get some fair idea about it from the information that's already out in news. Thoughts about .net in different forums are still trying to find out about it. You will find they have different thoughts about .net. Of course everyone has different perspective. Many of them see .NET as Visual Studio development environment for next generation of MicroSoft. Some see it as a new programming language, C#. Others see it as a new data-exchange and messaging framework, based on XML and SOAP. But it will be good to know that .NET wants to be all of the mention things, and doesn't want to be limited to it. You will get to see more about .net if it gets ahead of J2EE.

[kev woodman]

Sorry mate but .Net can't be considered to be at an early stage - the framework has been out for four years now. This isn't the next generation for MS - it's this generation and has been for a while. In fact it's going to be on revision 3 by next year when Vista comes out.

Another thing .Net isn't is a programming language. C# is part of the .Net framework, as is Visual Basic .Net, but the framework is an umbrella term which covers pre-coded software components and a common runtime environment.

I'm sure Paul was referring to ASP.Net which offers an interface between components that are common in desktop software dev, like controls, and Web dev.

[paul]

Yea I am referring to ASP.Net, IMO .NET developers probably don’t feel as strongly about their choice of platform compare to others. Anyway I hope .NET technologies and products might gain momentum in near future.

[kev woodman]

As a sometime .Net developer I feel pretty strongly about the platform and given the number of problems I've had with PHP recently I'm quite happy that my office has decided to produce our next project in ASP.

For those interested in the popularity of different technologies at tiobe.com/tpci.htm produce a monthly popularity index. Both PHP and C# have seen drops in usage recently (probably due to Ruby) while King of the Hill out of the Web languages is still Java with Visual Basic.NET coming in second (surprisingly).