Sure many enterprises use .NET, just like many enterprises use Java and COBOL running on zSeries mainframes.

What fraction of that .NET jobs would you call "interesting" of "cutting edge"?

.NET developers aren't in the endangered species list. Not more than COBOL developers who know what CICS means.

I like to think that my job of writing software with .NET to control deep sea robots is interesting. How many ruby/python developers could you say the same thing about though? I mean, most web apps are simple CRUD things, which are not interesting or cutting edge. That's an invariant across all programmers.

No kidding. I mean, I don't work on deep sea robots, but I really dig making games with .NET and find it awfully interesting.

If you read HN enough, you'll find that rbanffy's posts generally seem to come from a worldview where credit due to Microsoft, or even to those who use Microsoft products, is close to untenable. In other fora I've seen similar people referred to as ABMers - Anything But Microsoft. I mean, I'm pretty much a Linux/Unix guy (Macs and Linux alike), but I use .NET because it's the most portable option worth working with for my stuff. It's good for that. Sometimes even--gasp--Microsoft comes up with something worthwhile, and outside of the universes perpetuated by folks like rbanffy, many Microsoft products are even liked.

I've been to & heard of plenty of startups doing cutting edge things and using .NET. Maybe a geographical thing?

The thing about adoption in start ups is that Visual Studio 2010 Pro is so expensive. If Microsoft really wants to stay relevant they have to release Pro for free. They have to compete on price with the Eclipse or VIM/command line world. Until then, they will slowly die off. (The express versions are a joke, don't even get me started).

Microsoft runs a BizSpark program that, for all intents and purposes, gives startups access to most Microsoft software for free.

http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

You only pay for licenses over 4 OS and 2 SQL Server (or outright new ones) after graduating BizSpark. 2 SQL Servers (OS licenses are chump change by comparison) go a loooong way* too, as you're presumably scaling up rather than out.

http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/about/Graduation.aspx

Through the grapevine I hear the "review" process (for more free licenses at graduation) is extraordinarily accommodating, though I'd guess if you're spinning up a box per customer or something insane you'd get denied.

Lots of people get this wrong, I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't carved this correction into a mountain somewhere...

*Stack Exchange is running 2 + failover ( http://blog.serverfault.com/2011/09/30/the-stack-exchange-ar... ), and was running on 1 not too terribly long ago.

Did not realize it changed later. Thank you.

May i ask what's a joke about VS Express? IMO they are very much capable. At least for windows forms and web-applications, never tried the c++ version. In fact it beats any other IDE i've tried anyway.

Only thing i really miss from pro is plugins, version control-integration and code contracts, the last being a thing that probably justifies a price tag anyway.

You can't unit test with them out of the box. To get unit test integration is a rather large effort. If you want to carve a project into a web layer and into the business assembly, you have to jump between editors (web and C#). These two make the tools rather worthless for anything complex and web based.

Now their WinForms ability might be great, but there are few start ups out there at are actually doing anything with desktop development.