The only thing that stands out for me, not a single one of these startups use Microsoft tech, even though DOT NET apparently is quite good to work with, from what I hear.
I think that this article[1] is still relevant. In short, if you go Microsoft, you know you're locking yourself into an expensive ecosystem, one with no viable open-source escape hatch.
Moreover, you need to find developers that want to work on the .NET platform. Most of those people work in banking or in large organizations, and are unlikely to want to jump ship to a startup.
An article from 2014? You should know things have changed since then, with .NET Core and the open-sourcing of most .NET tech (Roselyn, OmniSharp and the .NET Core tooling).
No more lock-in with Windows Server, no more SQL Server. Bring your favourite Linux distro and open-source RDBMS.
I left .NET for Ruby in 2013, and in the last two years, I've come sprinting back to .NET Core. Microsoft is definitely hot again.
I use .NET Core with F# on Linux because you get a reasonably good functional language with access to a vast ecosystem and first class support on all clouds. Thanks to Fable and Feliz, you can use it to write React applications as well.
Microsoft Research certainly does a lot of interesting stuff, but I think the bigger point is inertia -- Microsoft doesn't have any in the startup space.
Ruby, and to a large extent Python, started from zero, and gained a ton of traction during the whole Web 2.0 rumble.
Microsoft is starting from a negative perception amongst a lot of engineers, and unless they can provide some sort of killer reason to use .NET technologies -- one that doesn't lock you into their ecosystem -- then I don't see them unseating the established players.
Swift and its descendants will be around as long as Apple is, same story for Java and Android. Ruby/Python/Node will continue on in the Web space, with Go/Rust/C++ duking it out for backend services.
This game changes should Microsoft blow a new market open, though, like Apple and Google did with smartphones.
> Microsoft is starting from a negative perception amongst a lot of engineers, and unless they can provide some sort of killer reason to use .NET technologies
Yeah, as stated above, I used to build on .NET back when WinForms was king. ASP MVC wasn't fun to write, Rails was a blast.
If you haven't got C# experience, I can understand the apprehension.
History repeats itself and almost definitely MS will get it wrong again for .NET, but right now, the money is good and the tech is interesting if you're into web tech and C#.
Having worked with both, I have exactly opposite feelings about the two platforms. Except speed of development, I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Webforms.
I was thinking the same but then almost none used Java either. And having been both a C# and Java dev, they're mostly comparable. I'd give C# the edge just because it's newer, it managed to add a few bells and whistles and improve a few quirks, but honestly you'd be hard pressed how similar they are. You won't need more than a week as an experienced dev in one to be comfortable in the other.
