I have been known to make a half joke about .Net developers in generals are lazy bastards  as an answer why there are very very few innovations created in .Net space in the realm of public software.

.Net makes excellent business software. Public software? nope.

I have been programming in .Net since 2000, ditching Delphi, Zope 2.0 and Cold Fusion after falling in love with the power of C# and ASP.Net's "everything is object" approach and have been happing using it exclusively ever since.

But I have been ashamed to admit that the lack of innovative public software in .Net space is also partly my own. I have been watching in envy about the rate of innnovative software and try outs in the fast rising Ruby on Rails since late 2005. They are just awesome in implementing and realizing ideas.

The ASP.Net model suddenly feels pretty restrictive. Spitting out those nasty javascript to control Googlemap javascript driven API suddenly feels more natural in Ruby and Python than the strongly typed environment of C#.

I have been floored by the amount of innovation that we are seeing in the upcoming C#3.0. Eat our short Java !!  But unfortunately, I still do not expect a burst of creativity in the public space by our own .Net community. We will not suddenly see the Django or Rails or Twitters or whatever next cools software in .Net space.

Who thinks MSN spaces is cool?

C# 3.0 is maybe way cool. But we are uncool people.

So last December I have been taking concrete steps to redeem the reputation of lameness in .Net public space software. Havana is an obession, not just a mere project, after dealing with the CMS space for years and getting sick with all the crap that one has to deal with.

CMS sucks. .Net public software is generally lame.

Great idea. Let's make a non-sucky CMS and at the same time proves that .Net software can be great in the public software arena.

The result is Havana. We just managed to get it to render two weeks ago and right now it still sucks in many ways, but boy, it does offer a lot of promise.

And yeah, the monkey stays.