Top all-time · #1698
Aaronontheweb
Personal blog · aaronstannard.com · on HN as Aarononthewebprogrammingstartupsbusiness
Aaronontheweb is a personal blog at aaronstannard.com about programming, startups and business. Since 2010, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Comments link his posts on the weakness of community-run .NET open source, .NET culture and startups, and Voat's single-box scalability. Commenters cite them as sources rather than praising the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Software. Startups. Outer Space.
Most-linked posts?
- The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-07-23
- .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-07-05
- There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be a Junior Dev – It Won't Last Forever2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-23
- NET Core Is Probably Fine2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-05-14
- The New Rules for Playing in Microsoft's Open Source Sandbox2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-06-04
- The Future of AI Belongs to Experienced Operators with Good Taste2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-28
- .NET Open Source: What Happens When the Free Lunch Ends?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-03
- The Taxonomy of Terrible Programmers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-19
- .NET Core Is Boiling the Ocean2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-26
- Software 2.0: Code Is Cheap, Good Taste Is Not2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-11
What Hacker News says?
The issue here was Microsoft appointing itself judge and jury of which projects should have most-favored-nation status and that criteria being reflected directly into the package distribution system. Given Microsoft's singular influence over the .NET ecosystem, this presents a massive conflict of interest especially when pitting Microsoft's own first party solutions versus third party ones - there would be a tremend…
Comment linking /dotnet-foundation-maturity-ladder/
on “.NET Foundation under fire as resigning board member questions its role”Submitted The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence as a story · 290 points
HN discussionThe community has begun contributing to microsoft-sactioned projects (notice those projects listed are all ms initiatives). There is still weakness in community initiaited/run projects, 2 years later http://www.aaronstannard.com/the-profound-weakness-of-the-ne...
Comment linking /the-profound-weakness-of-the-net-oss-ecosystem/
on “Open Source .NET – 2 years later”Submitted The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem as a story · 172 points
HN discussionInteresting that he didn't mention the core idea of this piece that got a fair amount of attention: http://www.aaronstannard.com/the-profound-weakness-of-the-ne... Namely, hat .NET developers don't really solve any hard problems
Comment linking /the-profound-weakness-of-the-net-oss-ecosystem/
on “Why I Left the .NET Framework (2013)”Submitted The Taxonomy of Terrible Programmers as a story · 166 points
HN discussionThere have been a few blog posts recently on this topic: http://www.aaronstannard.com/post/2010/07/03/NET-Culture-Sho... http://tinpanvalley.tumblr.com/post/796605832/why-startups-d...
Comment linking /post/2010/07/03/NET-Culture-Shock-Why-NET-Adoption-Lags-Among-Startups.aspx
on “Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?”Submitted .NET Core Is Boiling the Ocean as a story · 130 points
HN discussionAphyr has thoroughly explained what is wrong with MongoDB[1]. I'm quite sure that things aren't probably as swell with your tech stack you might imagine. A commenter here has in the past demonstrated how to cause someone using MongoDB data problems by sending too much information too quickly for MongoDB to handle in a targeted way although I can't find the link to it now. I have been wanting to try it myself to see…
Comment linking /post/2013/12/19/The-Taxonomy-of-Terrible-Programmers.aspx
on “Guide to MongoDB for startups”Submitted Developers who can build things from scratch as a story · 130 points
HN discussionThis has already been discussed in the past [1], and most people agreed that the reasons are bullshit because, yes, Mono [2] is alive and kicking. [1] http://www.aaronstannard.com/post/2010/07/03/NET-Culture-Sho... [2] Not Xamarin.
Comment linking /post/2010/07/03/NET-Culture-Shock-Why-NET-Adoption-Lags-Among-Startups.aspx
on “Ask HN: Why is .NET often avoided in the startup world?”Submitted The Myth of the Single-Person Startup as a story · 62 points
HN discussionI stumbled upon a post today on Voat's scalability: http://www.aaronstannard.com/voat-scalability/ This is the key issue it seems: >As for the SignalR issues, I was able to confirm that Voat is running on a single box. Not a big deal given that it's still a hobby project for the developers, but the fact that it's not designed to run on anything other than a single box is an obvious problem. Either remove SignalR or…
Comment linking /voat-scalability/
on “Watch Voat.co Bitcoin donations pour in”Submitted Getting Started with AppHarbor – Heroku for .NET as a story · 58 points
HN discussionSubmitted .NET Developers Begging for Ecosystem Destruction as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why You’re Failing to Realize Your Potential as a Developer as a story · 35 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Coming .NET Renaissance as a story · 30 points
HN discussionSubmitted .NET Open Source: What Happens When the Free Lunch Ends? as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rise of the Popped Collar Programmer as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Profound Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem as a story · 23 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Recruit a Technical Co-Founder for Your Startup as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted .NET Open Source: What Happens When the Free Lunch Ends? as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Drives a Startup Founder? as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted ASP.NET Core Ship Dates and Boiling the Ocean as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Profound Weakness of .NET OSS – Really Well Written Sitrep as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted So Microsoft Deleted Some of Our Packages from Nuget.org Without Notice as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted .NET Developers Begging for Ecosystem Destruction as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Do Business with Extremely Busy People as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Future of the .NET Foundation and .NET OSS as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
