Here is an interesting take on what it takes to be a good programmer. We’ve all known that good programmers are lazy for quite some time, but dumb?
From now on, I guess that’s one more insult in which I can take pride. Though, I suppose both of those terms can be applied positively or negatively in the world of programming. If I ever use either when describing someone or something, make sure you get me to clarify.
By the way, Google Deskbar and Google Talk rock my face.
I’m starting a new job next Monday at a small firm in Addison as a DBA and Senior Developer. It’s going to be interesting, as it’s a .NET/WinForms/ASP.NET (Microsoft’s “New Stuff”) shop, and I’m accustomed to Unixy solutions. At least the Oracle database is on Sun Solaris, but there’s talk of migrating to SQL Server.
The purpose of this post is to share my official opinion on Microsoft and .NET. As a supporter of Linux and OSS, a general assumption people have is that I consider anyone and anything Microsoft evil. Though I haven’t bothered correcting that assumption, it’s not completely accurate.
Though I am reluctant to admit it, Microsoft is on the right path with .NET. Microsoft is only the enemy insofar as they attempt to prevent interoperability, and the New Microsoft seems to be coming to the realization that they are going to have to do business in a world in which they produce only one of many popular computing environments, not the homogeneous landscape they dominate today. Between the various distributions of Linux and Apple’s Mac OS X, competition is on the rise. The iPod Halo Effect is one oft-quoted piece of evidence of this fact.
In the near future, the Mono Project’s open source .NET runtime will have full WinForms support, and Microsoft is “friendly,” according to this rather ancient post and this article by Miguel de Icaza. I’m optimistic about running Office, Money, and other proprietary Microsoft products natively in Linux soon (not Crossover– emulation is merely a stop-gap, and please don’t flame me about how it’s Not An Emulator). I’ll even pay for them! I just want to have the choice of an operating system other than Windows (as ubu once so cleverly pointed out, “the operating system named for a GUI feature”).
I’m confident that some day I’ll be able to run our applications on Mono, but even then I will likely be using Visual Studio .NET, because it’s damn good. I love Vim, but man you should see some of the things vs.net can do. Maybe I’ll find a nice way to use vi keybindings, find and replace, macros, and “.”, or maybe I’ll just get used to the idea of leaving the home row more often.
I haven’t been on board with any Microsoft “initiatives” in the past, oh, six years. In retrospect, the only reason I favored Microsoft back then was an ignorance of alternatives. But I’m on board with .NET.
Do you remember Sun’s hype about Java back in the day (”compile once, run anywhere”)? Do you also remember what a flop that turned out to be? Well, .NET is basically Java Done Right. Let’s face it. If Microsoft is on board with this, it’s going to be popular. That much is inevitable. Microsoft’s enthusiasm about having “other implementations of .NET” is a sign that they’re finally “getting it.” You do the math, folks. At the risk of sounding like a bona fide Microsoft evangelist, .NET will have an impact on the world of technology that is greater than Java’s. Look at the numbers: according to indeed.com, there are 57,618 java job postings and 57,207 .NET job postings. I’d say that’s an impact. Just wait until all of that software “runs anywhere” and supports your favorite programming language.
Well, wish me luck on my new venture, I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it in the near future, so stay tuned.
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