Opinion: Overseas viewpoint on U.S. development offers a different perspective.Asian developers are looking
at North American efforts and seeing a rapid increase in 64-bit
development, along with a reversal in a three-year decline of work on
thin-client applications. Its interesting that U.S. reports, based in
part on the same survey data, focus instead on a putative
decline in U.S. use of Java -- in contrast with its continued
ascendance in Asian projects.
Those U.S. reports note a significant uptick in North American .Net adoption. Im
neither "pro" nor "con" on the subject of .Net development: Its a
powerful framework, and a bold reinvention of Microsofts basic
ideas of how to build software. The "on the other hand" need not be
stated: The question is whether its .Net thats catching the bigger
audience, or LAMP light
thats casting the longer shadow.
Our flow of incoming entries for the eWEEK
Excellence Awards has shown a continuing increase in the number of
software candidates that are unapologetically specific to the .Net
platform. I can do the same math as the developers of those products:
They get a lot of productivity, and a lot
of access to user share, in return for leaving what looks to them
like a small number of non-Windows users as unserved potential
customers.
Moreover, despite some reader feedback that accuses me of bashing
Microsoft in my Dec. 5 review of
Visual Studio 2005, the concluding assessment in that review
praised the products "comprehensive, impressively choreographed
environment for building a broad variety of applications that include
both rich clients and Web services" -- that is to say, its ability to
pave the way for high productivity in .Net development for many
different users, devices and environments. I invite
discussion of the proper balance between product features and
vendor agendas in developer tool reviews on our Inside
eWEEK Labs blog, where I hope to find growing opportunities for
dialogue as that forum becomes more widely known to our readers.
Meanwhile, I urge U.S. developers not to assume that their decisions
today define the eventual direction that the rest of the developer
world will ultimately follow. The role of non-U.S. development talent
has been on
my radar for at least seven years, and that blip is still getting
bigger.
Tell me where you think my radar needs retuning at peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com.
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