Thursday, July 5, 2007

Do You Hear a Bell Tolling?

“No man is an island, entire of itself ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

—John Donne from "For Whom the Bell Tolls"


Has Microsoft died? Should I be concerned that your career might go with it? Its savior is long quiet; Ozzie last posted about Live Clipboard in April of 2006. I first expressed my concern publicly four months later, but I recently heard new development is going away from .NET and toward dynamic languages, at least for ThoughtWorks.



Microsoft made huge gains in the server market in the first part of the 2000s. .NET was to be their coup de grâce; and it worked for a while.



That is until the innovation in the web-space picked up again. It no longer pays to be average. So, besides serving as a brain-backup device for various solutions I've hammered out, this blog will also be the place where I try to incorporate what I learn from these high-falutin' technologies into my work as a C# programmer.



And, who knows? Maybe I'll learn a new language and escape the cave. If so, despite Plato's warnings, I will return to share what I've seen. Until then, however, I will continue to be impressed by Windows Workflow Foundation