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yet, your own signature indicates that you do 'custom software development based primarily on MS Tools with an emphasis on C# Development and consulting'.
as spock would say...fascinating...
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote: And there is a good reason. Although, many of their tools and technologies are great most are designed with a technician and a 2 year life-cycle in mind. ADO.NET and data readers solved most business software problems related to database handling. Yet, since 2001, how many technologies have spewed forth and how many, "frameworks" have leapt off the page to make this trivial concept easier? Worse, how many are no longer supported or in favor?
Students need to learn the fundamental concepts of how to develop, not which button to click. Systems need to be maintainable 10 years down the road. MS isn't stupid; they provide both but the anti-MS crowd, for good reason, see the technician half and frown.
Not quite sure what you point is.
However I can note that Java 1.3 was released only in the year 2000. Yet I don't expect to see any upgrades for it this year.
And the tiobe chart reflects many new computer languages that come and just as rapidly go.
None of those have anything to do with Microsoft. So could you provide something more specific than your general comments that fit within your 10 year timeline?
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No matter where you go or what work you engage in, you will always find people who engage in this[^].
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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Neat phrase! Those are some really hardcore nuns.
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There are fanatics everywhere.
On the other hand, less competition in the real world!!!
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Your description of university is exactly how mine was here in the US. I once got a 0 on a major project because I accidentally and subconsciously corrected a spelling error in the expected primary output. Needless to say, I chose not to remain at that institution.
I got an internship in the private sector doing .NET development and was woefully unprepared. It was awesome! Fortunately they were patient with me and I'm much better off now. 
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My question is this: why is there still such a disconnect between the academic world and the professional world? I work with C# and .NET all day long. That's not to say I love .NET all of the time, but it does get the job done quite often. It puts food on the table for my family.
I've taken CS classes at two different universities. One university focused more on the practical and business side of programming. The other was very academic. I understand the importance of learning assembly and other such topics in academics, but the "software development" class I took was so mathematical and so far away from anything I ever do in the professional world. I say that because I was working full-time doing development while taking this class. Why haven't some CS departments put more focus on the professional aspect of development?
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At my university (20 years ago)...
Computer Science was a B.S. (science) degree that with a few extra electives could launch an Engineering (P.E.) career path. Data structures, OS design, compiler design, language design/parsing, etc.
MIS was a B.A. (business) degree, Basic, COBOL, using IBM mainframes, systems administration, etc.
2 very different approaches. I think the same still holds true at my alma mater today.
Current day, I work with a few, technical C.S. style people that support a bunch of MIS programmers. Some of the MIS code is not the most efficient, but until something REALLY needs tuning, why worry about it.
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It seems to be quite common with things that are made by Apple too
See if you can crack this: fb29a481781fe9b3fb8de57cda45fbef
The unofficial awesome history of Code Project's Bob!
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
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I work for a massive company (125,000 employees) who have dumped all MS server products in favour of LAMP and all .NET desktop development in favour of C++/Qt. As a C++ contractor I'm not complaining.
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César de Souza wrote: So, does this happen in the rest of the world as well? How do you deal with it?
Yes, though I personally haven't met very many that don't at least grudgingly qualify their preference with something on the order of "for this particular task".
If it's truly an unreasoned response, I laugh at them. Go ahead, be unprepared for a managerial/strategic shift. Better for me.
Currently reading: "A Desert Called Peace", by Tom Kratman
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It is common everywhere but it is human nature that it is Microsoft. I've been in this business for 28 years before there was a Microsoft and someone ALWAYS has an opinion about something whether it makes sense or not. Back in the day when most of us were programming in FORTRAN I had a friend who could not understand why we were not programming in PL/1 (his favorite language). Explanations as to why you were not using PL/1 fell on deaf ears. Anyway, I use Microsoft tools when the client is a Microsoft shop and whatever else I need to use for other clients. It is whatever gets the job done. Whenever the religious zealots espouse their opinions I give them a pitying look and move on.
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swmiller wrote: Whenever the religious zealots espouse their opinions I give them a pitying look and move on.
You nailed it. Many people seem to "self-brainwash" and come to embrace a certain notion regardless of facts that contradict what they believe. Same with environmental fanatics, religious fanatics, political fanatics, so on and so forth.
Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...
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I like Microsoft alot!
Good thing too, since i'm a .NET Developer 
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It is a love and hate relationship with Microsoft. Its software is generally user friendly and easy to learn or to support. But they seem to have some fundamental issues that can't be resolved. Taking the Windows operating system as an example, it always takes too long to start and to shut down. This is the most important reason that many people in my corp switched to Mac. In terms of servers, I never see an IIS server running for a month without a reboot at least in my company.
TOMZ_KV
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Tomz_KV wrote: In terms of servers, I never see an IIS server running for a month without a reboot at least in my company.
I had a unix server one time that would do a cold boot if I ran a particular application.
Conversely I have several MS servers whose only down time for two years has been when moving data centers (once.)
From that limited experience I might conclude that all unix variants are trash and MS servers are stable as rocks.
Or I might come to the different conclusion:
1. I do not have enough actual experience to generalize for all platforms for all use cases.
2. Platform software changes rapidly enough that a true determination now might not be relevant at all in 2 years time. Nor is it relevant 2 years ago and certainly not from 10 years ago.
3. Users have a significant impact on platform stability.
4. Actual usage has a significant impact on platform stability.
5. Attempting to control for all of the above factors to provide objective real data would be a significant undertaking. And it is probably impossible for an individual. And might not even be possible for a large organization.
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Did you install Windows update regularly? If yes, your servers were rebooted every time an update was installed.
TOMZ_KV
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Absolutely, I agree, you know I'm a Microsoft shop not because I can't learn other things or because I'm a MS fanatic (that in part I should but not too much, I can be a critic too), it is because it offers the enough support for developers than anyone out there (in my opinion) and because specializing I can offer added knowledge value and be ahead of competition.
And yes I face anti-Microsoft practices everyday while looking for a project there are people who just don't know enough about technology and what you can do with it, there are people open minded who are willing to listen options but there are others that simply won't because you are saying Microsoft.
The way I deal with it is presenting real world software that was made using MS technology, and when they see something they didn't see before they say wow I want that 
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I am a Microsoft developer, and have been for 15 years because MS have always made it easy for me to do my job - develop great apps within a familiar environment, while enabling other developers to understand my work and get the support I need, when I need it. I have always found myself in extremely high demand especially in the larger corps such as banking in London. I, along with collegues like our systems running on MS solutions as they are the best all-in-one for what we need. .net offers a forced, high standard model of programming.
How to deal with it: learn another programming language and earn less money and implement solutions that cost less or move on and earn more money, providing better solutions where you are appreciated as an MS developer.
I believe the anti-MS thing is for those who can't afford MS, you pay for what you get in this world, they don't know what they are missing.
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Westley Cooper-Thorn wrote: I believe the anti-MS thing is for those who can't afford MS, you pay for what you get in this world, they don't know what they are missing.
Concur. I've been developing with MS technology since about 1981 when the original IBM PC came out.
I've looked at some of the "open source" software development offerings. After using Visual Studio I just couldn't take that kind of step backwards.
I don't lose any sleep over this issue. The code I write can run on at-least 90% of the machines out there. Why waste time with another platform?
Yes, it costs money to "tool up" when working with Microsoft technology. So what? Try becoming a real professional in any major field and expect to find "free" tools. Yeah, right - I'm going to go to a doctor that uses "open source" (I.E. 'Free') tools.
OK Linux fanbois ... start flaming!
-Max 
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Westley Cooper-Thorn wrote: I am a Microsoft developer, and have been for 15 years because MS have always made it easy for me to do my job - develop great apps within a familiar environment, while enabling other developers to understand my work and get the support I need, when I need it. I have always found myself in extremely high demand especially in the larger corps such as banking in London. ...
How to deal with it: learn another programming language and earn less money and implement solutions that cost less or move on and earn more money, providing better solutions where you are appreciated as an MS developer.
In my experiencein the US, MS developers, as a group and across the board, will earn less than unix developers.
Westley Cooper-Thorn wrote: I, along with collegues like our systems running on MS solutions as they are the best all-in-one for what we need. .net offers a forced, high standard model of programming.
Nothing but a subjective preference phrased to suggest that it is objective.
If not then please provide that measured statistics that back it up.
You can replace MS/.net in the above with almost any technical terms and find comments almost exactly the same in some forum.
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Subjective, Schnubjective. Of course you can replace the above text. I was sharing what I see as fact in my environment. Appreciated comments!
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Most people who are passionate about open-source environments tend to dislike Microsoft products. However, that doesn't make these products any better or worse than what open-source proponents use.
I am a senior software engineer and I have been using Microsoft products since the early 1990s and I enjoy using them. However, I have an interest in using corresponding products on the Linux platform if I had the time; especially with the Mono Project.
That being said, most open-source products are not all that good and very poorly documented. However, there are quite a few very mature and excellent open-source products that I would not hesitate to use if I had the chance. The people deeply involved in the open-source community are in many ways nothing more than ideologues with very narrow mind-sets. You find this in the Microsoft community as well. However, the difference is that with Microsoft, as a professional developer, you are there to earn a living and rarely have time to work for free.
The open-source community was built by academics and young technicians who did\do not have the responsibilities that older professionals have so it is quite easy for them to disregard anything that they do not see as "pure" or built with their specific concerns in mind.
As to the promotion of working at a more natural or detailed level than Microsoft products provide for, this is complete nonsense. As professional developers we are not in the business to waste time working with low-level details in order to satisfy our "inner selves". However, even with Microsoft developers you will find similar attitudes as with the proponents of the new ASP.NET MVC development model who only believe that building RESTful applications is the proper way to create web-based applications. Technologically they are correct. However, the real world is not interested in the correctness of a technology solution but that it get implemented.
Microsoft professionals do what we do because we enjoy it and want to earn a living building applications and components not fiddle with how best to create a layout; most of which does little to increase the performance or smoothness of an application's processing. The attitudes of those in the open-source community that seem to scoff at such levels of work never had to build large-scale applications under tight-deadlines while under contract. If they had they would never promote such nonsense and would be looking for ways to make their jobs easier just as we Microsoft developers often do
Open-source is also considered a failure as a business-model since it inherently has no such model except to give away software freely. There is a lot of hype about this methodology of doing development but very few concrete results when you compare them to the number of open-source projects that abound all over the Internet. Though there are a number of successful open-source projects that earn revenues with their work they are far and few in between. And the long-term result of such promotion has been significant damage done over the years to the professional community of developers that rely on their skills to earn a living and provide for their families....
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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Just another point, every time I try and use open source software to develop an app, I end up having to pay more than if I had developed it in MS platform to remove e.g. the open source logo or license it for my web-app. On multiple occasions open source has made my life difficult/more expensive in this respect. The open source software I use always seems to get bought out by a larger software company. MS seems to me to be the only platform that I can provide a business-class solution without any comebacks like this.
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