the open source stuff (fine - i'm showing my bias against MS with or without good merit)
I'm not saying that you can't build anything good / successful with MS products... and there are situations where going MS is a strong advantage (video games)...
I'm just curious why ppl would constrain themselves (in both flexibility and financials) when there's alternative tech that's comparable (or better)
Which open source stuff -- that's what I mean. I've used ActiveRecord in Rails and a few other open source data access technologies, but nothing I would consider to be a direct precursor to LINQ.
There are a lot of things that Microsoft makes that are derivative of open source -- ASP.NET MVC is effectively yet another Rails knockoff, for example.
But AFAIK, LINQ is something new and different, which is why I'm genuinely curious what you would consider to be similar to LINQ but predating it.
I'm not saying that you can't build anything good / successful with MS products... and there are situations where going MS is a strong advantage (video games)...
I'm just curious why ppl would constrain themselves (in both flexibility and financials) when there's alternative tech that's comparable (or better)