DevTopics

Speculation robed as explanation, but maybe still good for sake of conversation.

1. It is nearly two decades since the mind-share decimation event of .NET occurred, circa 2002: Visual Basic got a major redesign (VB.NET) that was so dramatic it made any conversion process a major non-trivial matter. C#, along with .NET, was the new shiny, and the adoption of it by a major standards organization (ECMA) certainly made it feel like the safer choice if one wanted to continue usage of Microsoft technology. Evenso, if the staff you had could be fine with either VB.NET or C#, then Java was also on the table, and Java might have felt safer to some, since it had a fine track-record since 1995 and was commonly taught in academia (and there was the potential of it also going to a major standards organization - which then did not happen). The only other option left was to stick-it-out then go-it-alone with the first generation of VB, which ended at version 6, released in 1998. Being early days of .NET, VB6 still was the performance champ (it could be compiled to native code, and integer checks could be disabled), didn't require the huge .NET Framework installation, and at first VB.NET didn't have the Edit-and-Continue feature which VB6 had. So with VB6 one had better speed, productivity, and "easier" installers (stepping aside all the vulgarities of COM/ActiveX).

2. In the meantime, .NET matured, C# matured, and VB.NET matured, and of course Visual Studio (for .NET) matured. Various…

>>There's always someone willing to pay you more than you're worth. After several years with a company it's likely that they're going to pay you what you're worth, but not what some other company thinks you're worth.

>is total loser thinking. No, actually.

When I finally quit my employee-day-job, I told them I'd do more work for them as a consultant. At 2x my previous hourly rate. They said yes, and I've gotten that rate several times since then as well from unrelated companies.

>a half-decent programmer is worth $500k+ easily

I would argue about what "half-decent" means, but generally think you're right that $500k for a good programmer would be a reasonable value. And by good I mean close to the 10x-25x end of the spectrum. [1]

I would describe someone in the 2-5x range as "half-decent" myself, and someone in that range is probably worth closer to $160k/year, tops. Someone at the top end of the productivity scale is faster, yes, but also produces better code, can debug that code more quickly, and can solve some problems that a "half-decent" programmer will simply never complete adequately.

[1] http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/

Haven't used it either (Google suggests nobody but the author is actually using it seriously), but from a quick look it's basically a virtual machine in C, so probably competitive with Lua / Squirrel / the other dozen lightweight embedded scripting languages.

It's probably easiest to just use V8 for any new projects, it's the fastest / most maintained and the scripting API isn't really that much more complicated. Plus basically everyone knows JS these days. https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/Getting%20Started%20with%20Embedding

Although Dao does have good concurrency/async features; V8 isn't really POSIX thread safe.

Random links which have Dao in them:
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2085
https://github.com/r-lyeh/scriptorium
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2526300/list-of-lua-derived-vms-and-languages
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-03/msg00137.html
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/05/29/0225227/dao-a-new-programming-language-supporting-advanced-features-with-small-runtime http://www.devtopics.com/dao-obscure-programming-language-of-the-month/

Instead of those specific skills only, for a CTO, they should perhaps look for someone with broad knowledge (or willingness to learn) of their problem/solution domain (web application development for instance), as well as solid technical ability.

Indeed... at the moment it seems like a case of the blind leading the blind. The fact is, all their VC links and grand plans will come to nothing at all unless they have execution ability. And they have no execution ability until they have a technology director - the kind whose back you can build a company on. Those are rare enough. The technology of choice or even the level of experience should be of no consequence. They need a 1 or 2 in this taxonomy:
http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/

Daniel