There are inflection points in life.  It would appear that I am at another.  IT “Management” has decreed no new .Net starts.  For the last decade I have been a .Net developer.  So…???  Shrug.  Whatever.

Let’s rewind a bit.

When I got out of college, I was a LAMP guy.  I ended up making a fair amount of money doing perl programming.  I built websites, CD-ROMs, and lots of automation scripting.  I was pretty solid with *nix platforms (Debian and Solaris were my favorites).   In short, I was doing OK in the Open Source world back then.

Why did I change from open source to, what was then, closed source?

Opportunities.

I attended meetings with Microsoft where they showed what could be done with their technology.  From C# v1 to Azure v1.  Each time, Microsoft provided a clear line of thought and succession.  They created order where the open source world only provided chaos.  (Not that they haven’t had several epic missteps too.)  Too many times, I saw customers left in the lurch because a given open source community faded then died.  Ruby?  Perl 5.X?  JQuery?  Compare that to C#.  How long has it been around and still growing?

So why take the risk to pin the hopes (and profits) of the Enterprise on JavaScript?  This makes no sense when you look at the history of Open Source projects.  They never last.  Never.  They either stop dead in their tracks like Perl did or they lose market share because something new shiny comes out.  Think Ruby and JQuery.  In both instances, the community simply evaporated.  The business is left with code no one wants to support (because the skillset left the building) and no one wants to risk a feature enhancement because it might break the existing code.  So why are we doing this?  I do not understand the thought process.  No one has been able to explain it to me.  Java I can almost understand (but not really).  JavaScript?  I’m can only scratch my head.

Make no mistake.  I have no opposition to Open Source software.  I am opposed to risking a multibillion dollar business on a technology stack that has a track record of chaos and premature implosion.

But…  I am here to serve the business.  If these are the new rules of engagement, I will do my part to ram MEAN down everyone’s throat until they choke on it.  Hopefully, the business will see the writing on  the wall early in this new development technology and force a little “regime change.”  And if I’m wrong, I can still be at the tip of the spear by adopting the new models and ramming them home with brutal efficiency.   I guess it’s time to spin up on the MEAN stack.

Anyone know any good, Enterprise-grade MEAN tutorials?  I haven’t found any…