Is the grass greener on the other side?

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Is the grass greener on the other side?

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I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now. Finally, I have a moment to spare and express my thoughts. I have been programming in .NET for several years and I have never felt the shortage of excitement until now. Unfortunately, when I think about the future of .NET I see nothing on the horizon. ASP.NET MVC has been pulling me back into the .NET community but this will end some time soon. Every time I start building the application I am faced with same stuff over and over again. It seems like as .NET developers spent too much time configuring stuff instead of actually working on the business problems.

Lately, Microsoft focus is on WebMatrix which I don’t really care about. Visual Studio 2010 has disappointed me more then a couple of times. Microsoft is also marketing solutions which will allow business analyst to write business applications (yeah right!). I thought software development is about solving business problems and not dragging and dropping random controls from the Toolbox on the designer surface.

Lately, I have been envying the Ruby community and the Ruby language itself. I am not a Ruby programmer by any means but it seems that when programming in Ruby the focus is on the business problems and not how to set up things.

I am not saying that I am leaving .NET programming I am just saying that maybe the time has come for me to seriously learn Ruby programming.

If you are a .NET programmer then I would love to hear your thoughts!

Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 6:35 AM | Back to top

Comments on this post: Is the grass greener on the other side?

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I'm glad you posted this. I think a lot of people are feeling this way lately.

Ultimately it comes down to what technology & tools make you productive and happy, and not necessarily being spoon-fed by Microsoft.

They are making investments in areas that don't appeal to us (WebMatrix, LightSwitch), but arguably also in areas that do (MVC 3 for example).

I won't be bold enough to tell you what to do, but I'm quite happy with my decision to use Ruby primarily & leave my .NET comfort zone in search of a much more enjoyable professional experience.

I'm really loving the Ruby & iPhone communities, and I'm learning all the time.

I still really like C# & .NET, and I think Microsoft will continue to push out improvements, but the "products" that come out leave me wanting more.

Left by Ben Scheirman on Aug 11, 2010 6:50 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I've been thinking the same things lately.

http://jonkruger.com/blog/2010/08/06/why-i-think-you-have-to-consider-ruby-on-rails/

Left by Jon Kruger on Aug 11, 2010 7:00 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I certainly would. I also find the online community around RoR a lot better as well, less whining about the same old stuff and more people who actually want to build software. I know my experiences with some of the MS "community" has been that those whoare crying the loudest are often also the people that don't really know how to actually build software, only argue the theory.

That's a poisounous mix when one side (the MS WebMatrix, Lightswitch, etc.) is geared towards trying to eliminate the developer from the process (as their market is geared more towards big telco/govt/corp) and the other end of that spectrum is people who make their living never building or completing *any* piece of software, only being an architecture astronaut.

Sorry, longwinded way to say I agree with you entirely, try out Ruby. I love it, myself!

Left by Justice~! on Aug 11, 2010 7:15 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

You can generalize that to anything beyond .Net and Java.

Left by Jared314 on Aug 11, 2010 7:33 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I kinda feel the same way. Last week was particularly disappointing due to the IronRuby news. Although I have to say I've been pleased with VS2010 so far.

Honestly I've been planning to learn more Ruby and play with rails for a while now, and not really because of anything Microsoft is doing. I just want to see what others are talking about first hand. At the very least I figure I'll learn some new perspectives and have another tool that I can use in the future.

Left by Dan Martin on Aug 11, 2010 8:26 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

kinda feels like it doesn't it?

though i feel MVC and .net open source projects are still keeping things interesting.

But general Microsoft direction as of late is disappointing and is definitely making you think twice about hanging around for next dragdrop or Amateur.Data framework.

Left by av on Aug 11, 2010 5:23 PM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I would love to hear more about this: "Every time I start building the application I am faced with same stuff over and over again."

I'm a .NET developer myself, but by no means locked in on Microsoft Tech (at least not on a personal level), so switching would be trivial in terms of loyalty. However, I'm currently working with ASP.NET MVC2 and I must say I love the posibilities, the various ways of achieving a single task, and the ease of not having to bother with things I shouldn't bother about.

I don't quite understand what you mean about configuring stuff? What I do is create a new MVC2 app, and start pushing data from som repository to the views. The db-connection is handled by EF which doesn't really need any configuring at all, the DB itself is build using classes to sql, so what I'm really doing when developing an MVC2 app is to write code in order to achieve my goals.

Regards
Yngve

Left by Yngve B. Nilsen on Aug 11, 2010 6:43 PM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

I don't know man, me thinks you have just been working on the same stuff for too long, getting worn out on the daily grind. MS stuff can be a pain, but at the end of the day all you do is grab data from a repository, show it on a screen, and put it back again, rinse and repeat. The tools you use to do it will make little difference once you have been staring at the same code base for 6+ months, fighting the same user problems etc. But i do agree with you on VS2010...steaming pile of screen freezing, unfinished, waiting for a service pack, frustrating, ball of crap.

Left by -Hank on Aug 17, 2010 2:04 AM

# re: Is the grass greener on the other side?

i m very thankful for presenting the article..this will be very much helpful to me since i m a beginner!!

Left by link building service on Oct 06, 2010 6:41 PM

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