Why was .NET called .NET?

http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/05/why-was-net-called-net.html

by damian2000 • 14 years ago

92 72 14 years ago

jacktoole1• 14 years ago

I keep a list of my favorite (vaguely) CS-related quotes. At some point I stumbled upon this: "I think Microsoft named .NET so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing."

(It was attributed to "Oktal", and I believe it was from the StackOverflow page linked by the article, which no longer exists.)

bashzor• 14 years ago

I was about to post the same quote :)

0x03• 14 years ago

I'm imagining a bunch of suits getting together deciding "Time to start working on the next generation of COM... COM2!".

And then the first developer gets ready to write some code, and goes "Explorer->Right click->New folder->COM2".

After a few attempts and some head scratching:

"Uhh.. I think we need another name"

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

That's interesting. But try creating a folder called .NET in Windows explorer... :-) Hint - you can't!

0x03• 14 years ago

Nice! So when they couldn't use a reserved folder name, they went for the next best thing ;)

steverb• 14 years ago

Sure you can.

Create a folder.

Rename it to ".Net.". The dot at the end of the folder name is important.

mkopinsky5• 14 years ago

This becomes quite annoying when I try to create a .htaccess file. (Command line rename is the only solution I've found.)

quink• 14 years ago

They should have just incremented the last letter of COM to create the new version CON.

Explorer->Right click->New folder->CON...

Oh.

cek2• 14 years ago

You have a good imagination.

I worked on COM at Microsoft. We had a project to add managed run-time capabilities to COM. This was ~'96.

Internally we thought of the Component Object Model that shipped as part of OLE as "COM version 1". The version that supported distributed capabilities (aka DCOM) as "COM version 2".

When we started working on adding managed runtime support we started talking about "COM 3". But that talk stopped quickly when I tried to create a directory named COM3 for some specs.

Creating the directory wasn't a problem. But putting anything in it or deleting was.

We quickly settled on the name "COR" for Component Object Runtime instead.

We actually released the COR at the '96 (I think) PDC as an alpha. But it never actually shipped because .NET won the internal battle (full IL based managed runtime to replace COM vs. incrementally adding garbage collection and other managed capabilites to COM ala Objective-C).

Later on, as the MS Transaction Server group was merged with the COM team, the name COM+ was invented to cover "DCOM + Transaction Server + MSMQ". This led to the fabled Project42 which I have chosen to forget.

0x03• 14 years ago

Wow, haha, thanks for sharing that. My old suspicions finally confirmed! :)

acqq• 14 years ago

I remember reading articles about COM+ which didn't mean MSMQ but looked more like something close to what .net framework became. Then I've read that Msmq and thought "what?" Wasn't then COR the first mentioning of what you name COR?

rmason• 14 years ago

Can't help you on why it's called .Net but it came very close to being called Microsoft ColdFusion

http://www.sargeway.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=6D...

daeken• 14 years ago

While interesting, you're conflating .NET with ASP. One is a broad stack for application dev, another is an unrelated technology for web dev.

leelin• 14 years ago

I was Summer intern at Microsoft in 2001 and back then the interns went to Bill Gates's house for a bbq near the end of the Summer. One of the interns asked "what other names did you think of before coming up with .NET?"

To the best of my memory, Bill's answer was something like:

  I didn't actually like the name .NET.  It makes people 
  wonder if we are finally just starting to learn about the
  Internet.  Sadly, the other proposed name was even worse.
  Our mission statement at the time was 'work Anywhere,
  Anytime, on Any device,' so the proposal was AAAWare.

damian20003• 14 years ago

Sounds almost as bad as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderware ;-)

rubyrescue2• 14 years ago

i worked on .net before it was .net. we didn't have a name for the runtime, we (a very large we) just forked the J++ compiler and started hacking, calling the J++ language "COOL", for Common Object Oriented Language. For a long time the runtime was only usable by building executable files with the "jvc" compiler but compiled C#. We started a VB fork that compiled to the "clr". Yet still no name. At the end of the day it was purely a marketing decision.

ConstantineXVI• 14 years ago

Curious, was the CLR also built off of the Microsoft JVM? And is any of the original code for either still rattling around inside modern .NET?

jroseattle• 14 years ago

Yep, I remember COOL as well. And yes, marketing strikes again. :-(

thebluesky2• 14 years ago

Works anywhere anytime on any device, hmmm think I've heard that before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once,_run_anywhere

baq• 14 years ago

yeah... write once, debug everywhere

edit: oh it's even in the article, how nice :)

haakon• 14 years ago

How nice of Mr. Gates to invite interns to his home, though.

furyofantares• 14 years ago

My understanding is that they did this every year, along with other intern events. The goal is to allow interns to become friends with each other, because friends follow each other through their careers, so the ones who decide to go back to microsoft will bring the others along.

DavidAbrams3• 14 years ago

Microsoft's naming has generally ranged from clueless to infantile.

.NET was definitely an attempt to play catch-up to everyone else in regard to the Internet, and even Microsoft couldn't explain what it was. We went to TechEd every year, and even attended a traveling dog-and-pony show that Microsoft held to explain .NET. We came away thinking it was distributed COM.

But then everything was named .NET. Or "My". .NET sucks, but the "My" this and "My" that was downright insulting. Yes, I know it's MY computer, because it's on MY desk. Holy shit, are those MY documents on MY computer? Who would've thought!

Then "Windows Me". WTF. Where was the enterprise version called "Windows Us"? And no, it didn't stand for "Millenium Edition", because that would've been "Windows ME".

Microsoft used to design good UIs, though. They did more to advance the GUI in the '90s than anyone else; definitely more than Apple has done to desktop GUIs since the '80s. But they've lost their way sadly over the last few years. Hopefully they can become relevant again and attract some decent design talent to replace what they've obviously lost.

And clean up this mess (this is Windows 7): http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7194/6889938667_20f136ca0b_b.j...

pygy_• 14 years ago

Waaayback link to the deleted Stack Overflow Q&A referenced in the article. 2010/08

http://web.archive.org/web/20100812155534/http://stackoverfl...

grandpoobah• 14 years ago

They were going to call it WinFX if I recall correctly

damian20003• 14 years ago

Yeah I remember WinFX as well, but I think that was around 2005 - it was the codename for the set of .NET 3.0 technologies later known as WPF, WCF and WF ... there's something here about it - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianm/archive/2006/04/19/578851.aspx

thought_alarm• 14 years ago

"Microsoft .NET, Microsoft's XML-based Web services platform, comprises four major pillars: 1) the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio® .NET suite of developer tools; 2) the .NET Enterprise Servers, which provide a robust infrastructure for Web services; 3) .NET devices and experiences; and 4) .NET services."

From a 2001 press release announcing "Hailstorm".

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2001/Mar01/03-19Ha...

damian20003• 14 years ago

interesting link - had to laugh at this bit ...

> "HailStorm" -based solutions allow users to manage and protect their personal information, as opposed to today's world in which it is scattered across the technology landscape, with no ability to control the privacy of their information.

If anything, things are worse now than they were back then.

ecaradec2• 14 years ago

"The question was deemed to be offtopic for StackOverflow,"

I've stopped using stackoverflow as a contributor, the moderators are really overzealous. Legit questions are killed way too easily, without any real recourse to explain or rephrase. Meta doesn't help because the same people are moderating both, and quickly end discussion there too.

It's really sad because the platform is great.

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

I have no problem with SO mods closing topics (the quality of new posts has really gone down as SO gains popularity), but I do have a huge problem with them permanently deleting closed topics after some time.

Some of the most popular posts on SO with thousands of hits a day linked to from all over the web have been permanently removed with no official archived location. They're throwing away years and years of community posts and comments, with some very valuable info and data in there. It's really sad.

gbog• 14 years ago

I don't know. I think one of their biggest problem is to handle "gravity": how good content flows and bad content sink. Wikipedia handle this better. They, at SO, have to have some gravity.

hugh4life• 14 years ago

The biggest thing I loath about SO is when they close threads because the question has been asked before and then link to a thread that nobody has replied to 3+ years.

SO is becoming less and less useful as time goes on because they actually stop questions that need to be re-answered from being re-answered.

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

To be fair, the quality posts have already been asked. What else left is there to ask?

akent• 14 years ago

The original question was from March 2009. Deleting that three years later is bad internet citizenship -- it's removing internet history for no good reason.

Fair enough, if it was a new question asked today, no question, delete it, as it's clearly off-topic now, according to the rules they've clarified and developed over the years. But when these types of questions were asked originally they were on topic at the time. Deleting them retrospectively is poor form.

watmough• 14 years ago

Yes, I completely agree.

I tend to feel a large loss of community from deleting items like this.

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

I'm also of the opinion that these questions in general offer far more value (and are far more interesting to read) than the hundreds of "how do I iterate MySQL results/display them on my page/use a PHP function in javascript" that get posted every day.

I'm really struggling to see what benefit there is to deleting these things.

mattchew• 14 years ago

It is very sad. Perfectly reasonable questions getting shut down, looks very hostile to newbies, not at all the environment that I thought it was supposed to be.

I don't understand what happened. I'd like to believe there was some good reason that sparked this excessive moderation and it just went overboard. But it looks like a clique of insiders going on a power trip.

Whatever happened, I hope it changes.

pbz• 14 years ago

When you have a question that is upvoted and answered a lot, and then the mods come in and close or even worse delete the question, it's just them flexing their muscles. There should be a way for the community to couter vote the mods if you have at least X amount of points yourself. If mods get overruled so many times they should lose their mod rights. We need some kind of "checks and balances" to keep the mods "honest."

bztzt• 14 years ago

I always figured it was a pun on COM.

cek2• 14 years ago

There's actually some truth to this.

neilk2• 14 years ago

I worked at a company that was a sometime-partner of Microsoft in its efforts to get other languages running on the CLR.

You have to understand that Microsoft had spent most of the 90s being clueless about the internet. Then actively trying to kill it. But by 2001, their strategy was to embrace and extend internet protocols and technologies so they would be forever tied to Microsoft.

My impression was that .NET was a marketing term for a number of unrelated technologies that all served this overarching goal, that all came out roughly around 2001. They were saying to big corporations, that your choice wasn't Microsoft versus the internet, Microsoft WAS the internet. Only better.

C# and the CLR were there to counter Java and the JVM.

Their concept of Web Services was to make web technologies a mere transport layer for an RPC protocol called SOAP, which you would build with Microsoft IDEs.

Hailstorm and Passport were an attempt to make Microsoft the centralized broker for all sensitive information on the internet. Think Facebook Connect, only imagine it was more corporate and business focused, and knew your credit card number.

Anyway, Hailstorm/Passport and Web Services are dead, but The ".NET Framework" lives on in the CLR and C#, which were actually rather good even apart from Microsoft's strategizing.

fhars• 14 years ago

Your impression sounds plausible. I have always seen .NET as a me-too marketing reaction to Sun's cheesy "we are the dot in .com" (as for example on the first slide of this 1999 ppt presentation on the future of java: http://www.java-forum-stuttgart.de/jfs/1999/folien/B7_Jim_Co... )

neilk2• 14 years ago

I doubt it's a reaction - it was just that, at the time, a domain name was a symbol of newness, coolness, and gobs of money. "blahblahblah.com" was something that even the most clueless IT executive knew meant "the internet". So both companies would want to exploit that.

savrajsingh• 14 years ago

Fun fact: office 2003 was originally designed around these APIs, and it was planned as a cloud offering. The world just wasn't ready for it back then.

DavidAbrams3• 14 years ago

But now that people are more gullible, it seems like a fine idea.

narcissus2• 14 years ago

It's funny that you should mention their cluelessness of the web at the start. I remember when .NET was first released, my first question was "wow, how do they ever expect me to find that in a search engine?!?"

Search engines were a little dumber back then :)

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

"dot net"

icebraining• 14 years ago

C♯ isn't much better, since IIRC search engines often ignored special characters.

DavidAbrams3• 14 years ago

Companies are STILL pulling moronic moves like that. Cooke, a cinema-camera-lens company, decided to call their electronically coupled lens technology "/i". Yes a slash with an "i" after it. Try searching on THAT.

BrianLy• 14 years ago

There were likely considerations that fed in at different levels of the process:

1. Higher-ups who still believed that they could offer a platform that would be more valuable than the internet at large. Hailstorm always felt like an AOL for web services. 2. Lower down in the MS hierarchy various areas were under pressure. They had technologies built on COM and Win32 that had been thrown together quickly as a response to the growth of the web. eg. IIS and COM+. Both had problems in terms of scalability (and security as exploited later) and there is was no way to improve performance without jumping down to C++. Obviously there were a lot of other issues with these tools and a "rewrite" was needed.

Microsoft were really playing catch-up here and "copying" various things from the JVM ecosystem such as garbage collection was required. It is worth reviewing Brian Harry's note re: reference counting. A large number of developers were concerned with the implications of this change but it was for the better (for more people - there is still no perfect solution here). C# appears to the uninformed to be a mere copy of the Java language but Microsoft included features to attract some C++ developers, help the transition, and improve usability over Java. SOAP is an abomination, but it is still better than DCOM which came before.

I think Rotor was one of the most valuable things that Microsoft produced in the early years of .NET. Ted Neward et al wrote a book on it with O'Reilly and an unpublished 2nd version is at http://callvirt.net/blog/post/SSCLI-20-Patch-for-VS-2010.asp.... You may not want to look at Rotor if you contribute to Mono-based projects.

thebluesky2• 14 years ago

"Why was .NET called .NET?" Because they couldn't call it Java: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project...

blumentopf• 14 years ago

The new name ".NET" for NGWS was unveiled June 22, 2000. (Source: http://heise.de/-26825 -- in German)

In the months leading up to the announcement, Microsoft had registered a truck load of domains including: dot-in-the-dot.com, dot-in-the-dot-com.org, dot-in-the-dot-com.net, dot-in-the-dot-com.com, dot-in-the-dot.net, dot-in-the-dot.org, dot-truth.org und dot-truth.net. (Source: http://heise.de/-27004 -- in German)

So clearly the name .NET was a play on Sun's "we're the dot in .com" stategy. They noticed Sun's success with Java and the JVM in enterprise software development and started their Xeroxes as usual.

By the way -- Loved Sun's ad campaign back then: http://www.bevinceengel.com/SUN-MICROSYSTEMS-THE-DOT

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

I think at one point .Net was going to be the next major brand for all MS products. At one point MSN Messenger was called ".Net Messenger" before it was renamed to Windows Live.

I imagine the branding didn't work for consumer products because nobody had any idea what it meant. Hell , I had no idea what it meant. I remember trying to figure out what .Net was because I had heard so much about it , but all I could get from MS' website was jargon and buzzwords about "enterprise web services".

It wasn't until I started writing C# code that integrated so seemlessly with old VB code and started being able to do things easily (like sockets , databases and GUIs) that I would previously have had to dig through obscure C++ APIs for that I "got it".

andrewtbham• 14 years ago

It certainly wasn't where it would be an easy distinct name to search.

joejohnson• 14 years ago

What's with the deletionism at Stack Overflow. Do they really feel that these "off topic" posts detract from the overall quality of the site?

Why was .NET called .NET?

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