the case against .NET

Scoble has been asking whether venture capitalists (VCs) are investing in .NET developments.

This is a bizarre, geeky kind of question. A good VC won’t care whether the project rests on .NET or any other platform. He’ll be looking for innovation leading to return on investment.

So where does .NET offer the potential of productivity gains? One place only: the server. Here, there is no need to burden users with 20-something MB of extra downloads/installs, and concerns about memory and performance overheads. In any case, .NET offers client developers minimal productivity gains over best-in-class Win32 tools.

On the server, though, .NET can shine. There’s real innovation in ASP.NET. Combine this with IIS 6 running on Windows 2003 and you have a compelling server platform.

Around 10 years ago, Microsoft made a costly mistake in pushing ActiveX Controls for use in web pages. Then, the main competitor was Java applets.

Ten years on, Microsoft is still fighting a phantom Java enemy by pushing .NET on Windows client computers. The truth is that Win32 already had this market sown up. In undermining Win32, Microsoft risks losing the initiative in client computing altogether.