.NET is Stale?

Here's dhh on twitter: "Wish someone would study the cultural inhibitions in Denmark that binds it to stale, conservative platforms like .NET"

.NET is stale?  Fuck you!

ASP.NET MVC

Fubu MVC

MVC Mini Profiler

Peta Poco

Dapper

Massive

Psake

NSubstitute

NSpec

Fluent Validation

Autofac

NServiceBus

Mono

Raven Db

Nuget
Fluent Migrator
Manatee

Not to mention the language features of C#:

LINQ

Lambda expressions

Anonymous Types

Dynamic

Is C# the most elegant language ever invented?  No, but it is one of the most elegant I have used, especially for a statically typed language.  And the language itself is clearly one of the most advanced available.  This is stale?

Did all of these ideas originate in .NET?  No, but what the hell difference does that make?!  The .NET community finds and adopts the best ideas, whether they started in Java, Ruby, or Python.  This is stale?

Are there companies still using .NET 2.0 and little to no open source software?  Yea, there are also companies on the bleeding edge, using all the tools listed above.  From organizations with strict upgrade guidelines, to organizations that wait for the first service pack, to organizations that go to production on beta releases.  You'll find it all in the .NET community.  This is stale?

Ruby is a joy to program in.  Dynamic languages are more fun to do TDD with.  Percentage wise, I'm sure more Ruby programmers participate in the open source community.  There are a wide array of really great things about Ruby (and Python, etc etc).  There are also plenty of shitty things (poor backwards compatibility, poor documentation, poor tutorials, elitist attitude, etc etc).

But this bullshit attitude that .NET is stale, outdated, joyless, or somehow dramatically inferior is nothing but short sighted and stupid.  Get over your buyer's remorse and go build some software that contributes to something larger than yourself.

* Did I leave off your favorite fresh .NET tool or feature?  Leave it in the comments.

Windows Console Colors

I just got bit hard by this, so I'm documenting for the future.

I want my cmd, powershell, and console2 colors to all be the same.  Sounds simple, but it's a bit confusing how this all works in windows.

Here's what you need to know:

1. Your background and foreground color settings specify a color index: 0-15
2. The actual color code associated with that index can be defined in 3 places: "defaults", "properties", and console2's settings.
3. "Properties" overrides "defaults," and console2's settings override everything.

I wanted all my shells to have the powershell default colors.  Here's how you do that:

1. Launch powershell
2. Right click the window header and select "Properties"
3. Click the 'Screen Text' radio button
4. Copy down the index of the selected color box (should be 6, that is the 7th box)
5. Copy down the color values of that box (should be 238,237,240)
6. Do the same for 'Screen Background' (index of 5, color 1,36,86)

Now we'll make CMD use these colors:

1. Launch cmd
2. Right click the window header and select "Defaults"
3. Click the 'Screen Text' radio button
4. Select the index color box you copied down above (should be 6)
5. Change the selected color values to the values you copied down above (should be 238,237,240)
6. Do the same for 'Screen Background' (index of 5, color 1,36,86)

Now we'll make Console2 use these colors as well.  Console2 seems to automatically use the color indexes you defined in the "Defaults" settings but it wont use the color values you defined...  So you have to redefine them in Console2's settings:

1. Launch Console2
2. Edit > Settings
3. Change the 5th index color box mapping to the value you copied above (the dark pink one to 1,36,86)
4. Change the 6th index color box mapping to the value you copied above (the bronze one to 238,237,240)

Now all your shells will have the same colors, including custom shells you host in Console2 like VS or Ruby or git-bash.

Enjoy!