I’ve been privileged enough to learn a lot of new technologies over the past few months, some of which might be the subject of future blog posts… but the thread of commonality that weaves through all of these technologies is that they’re not part of the “traditional” Microsoft technology stack. This might change with the advent of ASP.NET and open-sourcing of the .NET core, but for now it rings true, at least for me.
Most Microsoft web applications run the same way… ASP.NET MVC, .NET, SQL Server, IIS, Windows. These are your technologies and they’ll give you most of what you’ll need. Need a queue? Check: MSMQ. Need an ORM? Entity Framework. IoC Container? Unity. They have an answer for most things, and they typically work well together.
However the new-to-me technologies I’ve been exposed to have opened my eyes a little into alternative approaches; for example I’m finding the Linux way of handling security and service configuration to be much better suited to a server environment… I don’t have a handle on exactly why yet, but it simple feels that way. I might explore this in a later post.
So if you’re a .NET developer using exclusively Microsoft tools, don’t be afraid to peek over the wall to see what the other kids are playing with. You might not like the toys, but you might get some ideas on how to play differently…
Me? I’m loving it.