“So, today I resigned my job, and completely ended my Microsoft career. I have taken a role as Director with a company at the leading edge of the “Web 2.0” curve. My team and I will write Ruby on Rails code, use Macintosh computers to do so, shun Microsoft technology completely, go to work in shorts and sandals and blast each other with nerf guns.”
I have a ton of respect for Pete and look forward to reading about his new experiences. I know more and more .NET developers who are playing around with RoR in their spare time, I wonder how many will convert over the next couple years?
-James
I've messed around with RoR, and... to be honest, it's not a full-featured framework compared to asp.net. There are some neat things about it, and the idea of using my mac and doing all my development in OS X is appealing. But I don't think it's ready, I don't think DHH has what it takes to make it a widely used enterprise quality framework based on his attitude, and there are still many things they are trying to add that are already part of asp.net that I have to say it's not there yet. Maybe someday. Not yet.
I also have not been that impressed with Rails. I find the "hype to reality" ratio really, really annoying.
The most interesting feature to me is the ActiveRecord data support, which can be a big timesaver if your data schema supports it well.
I think the new LINQ data support coming in .NET blows it away though. It is much more elegant and doesn't have many of the data model restrictions that ActiveRecord requires....
It's a shame to see Pete leave MS on this footing.
his blog seems to me to be full of resentment, anger and maybe a little bit of irony...it's a shame but then again "it's always greener on the other side"..
RoR is a hype in my opinion..you can build a lot of quality apps with it but i don't see it changing places with frameworks like .Net..As Robert said, the "hype to reality" ratio is a bit annoying.
The one constant I have discovered in IT is that 80% of the people in the industry have absolutely no idea what they're doing.
He's going to find the same thing using RoR.
It's not an MS problem. It's an IT problem. And actually, it's a problem in general whenever one enters the workforce. Most people simply don't care about their jobs.
To me, it sounds like he had some difficulty assessing the companies he worked for before he got there. If he never learns that skill, he's always going to find disappointment.
Considering the higher learning curve of .NET, he's going to find the people using RoR even worse. The S/N ratio in the RoR space is much higher than .NET's.
I do find it somewhat sad that his own passion was lowered by other people's viewpoints, rather than him realizing that he really has no control over what other people's opinions and attitudes are.