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Is Microsoft's .NET Ecosystem On the Decline?
Nerval's Lobster writes: In a posting that recently attracted some buzz online, .NET developer Justin Angel (a former program manager for Silverlight) argued that the .NET ecosystem is headed for collapse—and that could take interest in C# along with it. "Sure, you'll always be able to find a job working in C# (like you would with COBOL), but you'll miss out on customer reach and risk falling behind the technology curve," he wrote. But is C# really on the decline? According to Dice's data, the popularity of C# has risen over the past several years; it ranks No. 26 on Dice's ranking of most-searched terms. But Angel claims he pulled data from Indeed.com that shows job trends for C# on the decline. Data from the TIOBE developer interest index mirrors that trend, he said, with "C# developer interest down approximately 60% down back to 2006-2008 levels." Is the .NET ecosystem really headed for long-term implosion, thanks in large part to developers devoting their energies to other platforms such as iOS and Android?
Perhaps, but that begs the "why not just go with Java?" question, since it supports both Android and every desktop OS (and lets face it NOTHING runs on both iOS and everything else, that's a pipe dream, unless you want to do QT stuff, which is great, but begs ANOTHER question, "why not just use QT/C++?").
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Microsoft sealed the fate of .Net by not choosing it as the basis for Windows 8.x and the metro UI. That indicated that Microsoft no longer sees .Net as the next gen framework for Windows, .Net has, of course, done its job. Which was to kill Java. Which, for desktop applications, it has.
As a Windows developer, it leaves me with somewhat of a dilemma. Which framework is the way forward on the Windows platform? It's not MFC, nor Silverlight. Is it .Net? Is it Metro?
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