Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users in 4 hours.

Re:Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users ... by evilduck on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @12:22PM (#2556820)

I usually see this view explained that due to the .Net stack's higher up front cost than free alternatives, and (debatably) higher long term cost, it's an uncommon choice for startups.

Basically, deploying a .Net site requires at minimum 1 personal license of Windows and 1 server license of Windows. Sometimes a non-free copy of Visual Studio, and usually a license for SQL Server (since many MS people use the whole stack for integration reasons). Without buying hardware, Windows hosting is also always more expensive.

Compared to a LAMP/Rails/Django style app which you could theoretically get off the ground for the hardware cost of a local PC and cheap VPS hosting.

Of course developer familiarity, your local hiring pool, initial launch scale, business partners, vendor integration, etc, etc, etc, all influence the tech choice and its impact on cost.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users ... by praeclarum on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @01:54PM (#2557163)

You're absolutely right about the costs of running real iron - Windows adds $1,000 per machine. But Windows virtual machines cost the same as Linux: about $20/mo for a lowend VPS. Plus the code is compiled and tends to run more efficiently than Ruby for instance. :-)

If you are awesome and outgrow that VPS with some paying customers, then I think you can swing the $1,000 on a windows license.

I really hate being a shill for MS...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users ... by alnayyir on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @05:17PM (#2557948)

>Plus the code is compiled and tends to run more efficiently than Ruby for instance. :-)

Those words don't mean what you think it means. You're right that most CLR code will be faster than equivalently idiomatic Ruby code that accomplishes the same task, but the reasons for it have nothing to do with compilation.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users ... by Jacob4u2 on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @01:50PM (#2557147)

Regarding costs and licensing, have you heard of AppHarbor (http://appharbor.com). It's like Heroku but for .Net, free (at least right now) for small web apps and has SQL Server and MySQL database options.

Also, I've heard mention of BizSpark which kind of defers your costs but I haven't got any hard evidence that it is still a good option for startups.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users ... by qq66 on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @01:54PM (#2557162)

There's no upfront licensing cost due to Microsoft BizSpark.

[ Parent | on HN ]