Anyone here move from .NET?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Up to this point I have been knee-deep in .NET - ASP.NET, VB.NET, C# and starting to look into Silverlight 3 Beta. I've been using the .NET platform for 5+ years now. It's really nice, I don't have a lot of bad things to say about it.

Currently I'm a one-man shop. I have a few .NET clients that I support and that's fine and dandy. However, I continue to get this itch that wants to be scratched. Part of me really wants to let go of the .NET world and ramp up development with Ruby on Rails. I know this feeling is also a result moving from PC to Mac. In a perfect world, I would use my primary machine to develop applications.

What are your feelings on this? Have you moved from .NET to RoR? Windows to Mac? Why? It's a challenge I would like to take on but I want to be smart about it too. If I have technologies in my pocket that work, why should I go elsewhere?

2

What are your feelings on this? Have you moved from .NET to RoR? Windows to Mac? Why? It's a challenge I would like to take on but I want to be smart about it too.

http://www.softiesonrails.com/ is by people who made that jump (and now do training etc. for .NET refugees)

If I have technologies in my pocket that work, why should I go elsewhere?

Ignoring the specific technologies, having another tool in your toolbox is rarely a bad thing, plus learning new stuff is fun.

Fred

3

Having more than one tool in your pocket is very beneficial, and Ruby/ RoR are great tools to have. I have done a lot of .NET development in the past (and I did enjoy it) but have been doing mostly RoR for the past year.

I won't say that I will never do a .NET project again. In some cases, a client may not be willing to change their infrastructure and may only be willing to support Windows/IIS/SQL Server.

I've turned down projects where the client was entrenched in non-agile processes, but I wouldn't turn a client down based on the technology they wanted to use.

4

I was a .NET developer for last 5-6 years. I learned RoR about a year ago. I never want to do another .NET project again if i can avoid it. I'm on 2 RoR projects right now and hope all my new projects will continue to be RoR.

5

Hell, I’m still an Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET and I’ve been working on rails for a while. Most of the recent apps I’ve built have all been rails:

http://urlagg.com

http://hushchamber.com

and another coming out in friends & family beta in a week or two (also rails).

I moved because ruby and rails made development fun again, I love to write code and ruby is way more fun. That’s not to say it’s not without it’s headaches, but by and large I’m much happier with my MacBook Pro, TextMate and ruby on rails than a tablet, VS2008 etc.

There are a bunch of folks that have made the move, lots of twitter-folk to:

http://twitter.com/jschoolcraft

http://twitter.com/rbazinet (I’m almost positive)

http://twitter.com/mentalvelocity

the softies on rails mentioned above are both on twitter.

Jeff