My rebuttal to Top 13 reasons to CONSIDER the Microsoft platform for Web 2.0 development.
- Free Developer Tools.
I develop using Linux and Mac OS X. Microsoft developer tools are typically Windows-only… Has this changed?
- Free Database
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition runs only on Windows and has limitations as to how you can use it. Why limit yourself with the constraints? I’ve used Microsoft SQL Server and I did not care for it. MySQL or PostgreSQL are more to my liking.
- Microsoft Atlas makes AJAX easier.
Somehow I just don’t believe it. There are plenty of (good) open Javascript libraries out there to handle with Ajaxy stuff, is Microsoft’s better?
- Microsoft doesn’t HAVE to get ALL of your business.
Microsoft still wants all of your business, but they’ll take what they can get. I’ve tried to implement non-Microsoft stuff with Microsoft stuff in the past, and it wasn’t always fun.
- Microsoft solutions can scale.
I’ve yet to see this on the projects I’ve been involved with. Well, I suppose if the projects I worked on had 100 times the budget to throw more and more hardware at the problems, then perhaps I would have seen Microsoft solutions scale.
- Microsoft pricing is flexible.
You can pay them a whole lot of money, or you can pay them a ton of money. Oh, and the prices will most likely go up in the future, that is, if the products you license still exist at that point.
- Ray Ozzie
I still wish Ray Ozzie had not gone to Microsoft…
- Robert Scoble
Ok, this might be the only reason to consider Microsoft…
- Being based on the Microsoft platform doesn’t limit your acquisition options.
Building to flip is a losing strategy…
- Microsoft wants to be a part of the community
The open-source community? The Linux community? The Microsoft community!
- Microsoft employees aren’t evil.
I’d agree that Microsoft employee’s are not evil, but they believe that they do no evil, and with that I am not sure I agree… And Microsoft, well, it’s most likely evil…
- Microsoft has good development resources
Whew, that’s good to know, because in the past it’s been impossible to find things on microsoft.com, since they seem to move pages around, and occasionally just delete things. I’m sure learn2asp.net isn’t just some campaign to get people to switch to ASP or something…
- Microsoft speeds web application development
Is speeding development really the best idea? What’s the old saying? Fast, Good, Cheap… Pick two.
Now I don’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t consider the Microsoft platform for your own use, but based on my past experiences, I doubt that I will.