intdev

I am surprised that not many people are excited about this deal. I have only heard good things about WP7 so far and things will definitely improve as the platform matures. I don't understand why people have already labeled it as a failed platform.

People are also saying that the deal is only beneficial to Microsoft. The two real choices Nokia had were Android and WP7. WP7 seems like a more sensible choice to me. Sure they will have to sacrifice things, but they might gain overall. I think Microsoft and Nokia together make a killer combination that is going to help both these companies to bounce back in the mobile arena.

When was the last time you did some C# development? Things have changed and for the good. Web development on C# is quite a pleasant experience now with ASP.NET MVC. Lack of open source libraries? Almost all of my .NET development stack is open source libraries. Nothing comes close to Visual Studio as an IDE. To the OP, I would say C# is a solid language, worth diving into. Also, people who think C# is not free need to check out ECMA-334.

You have basically just thrown your biased opinion, making a lot of generalisations.

"The kind of dudes that wear teva sandals with socks and tucked in short sleeve shirts. You can also call them copy and paste developers, because that's essentially what they are"

I am shocked to see you get upvoted after making the kind of a statements that you did in your post. I expected better of HN.

I think the bigger problem that Microsoft faces is their tarnished past image. Whatever they make, no matter how innovative or well made it is, people's perception towards the product changes immediately when the word Microsoft is attached to it. This I think is the major PR and marketing challenge faced by Microsoft today. People need to move on and have a broader outlook. People will still bring up IE6 to support their anti-MS arguments.

AirBnB's story was pretty inspiring.

Let me start by saying that I am an Indian hacker. Forget the name. Even if you ignore the name, I personally do not like the idea of an "Indian HN clone". HN stands for something. It is a global close-knit community. It is as if you are forming your own group and sitting at a different table for lunch at school. What if every country sat on their own table? It is just going to result in unnecessary fragmentation.

Now, I understand that you are not moving away from HN and have created the site to discuss Indian specific issues, but I don't see what is stopping you from discussing those issues on HN itself. The site being an exact HN clone doesn't sit well with your good intentions. Add to that the fact that you are using the same name.

Sorry for generalizing, but IMHO, the global image of Indian hackers is not particularly good, and this sort of thing doesn't help. Personally I would suggest looking at some different means to solve the problems for which the clone was created. You have my respect for trying to take some initiative though.

Generally responding to the comments so far.

I am a developer from Mumbai, India. I used to be a game programmer and I have worked on a published game. I still do some hobby game development here and there.

I have taken a liking to web development as well. I currently work full time at a web startup. This is something I want to do on the side for now. Although I have played around with PHP and Ruby, C# is currently the language of my choice and for web development I like working on the ASP.NET MVC framework.

I am interested in web projects. I have not really narrowed in on idea for the first project yet. I have a few ideas buzzing around my head. The one that I am currently prototyping is based on helping users find people to collaborate with (somewhat like some of the sites already mentioned in this thread). The other one revolves around meeting new people. More info available on request. I would perhaps prefer brainstorming an idea together. That way we both connect with the idea.

I have already looked at ProgrammerMeetDesigner.com and builditwith.me to find the kind of a guy I am looking for but haven't had success. Some suitable people that I found on there never responded back.

There are a few. I have checked them all out including the HN co-founder sheet on google docs, but I haven't really found anyone yet. Looks like designers don't like replying back to emails, or maybe I am approaching them in a wrong way.

Oh. Thanks a lot for pointing that out! Fixed.