C# job opportunity

[Obsoleet]

This is a pretty small, tightknit part of the AT forum here in Programming.. and many of you may know that I'm a hobbyist Python developer. I work in a .Net shop that is releasing a new product built on top of MS Dynamics.
I've been given the choice to start doing more coding at work, this would be in C#. I honestly know nothing about C#, and I'm a mediocre/beginner Python hobbyist programmer. I like it though, and it's the first time I picked up and ran with programming. I went down the Python road even though I've done almost all of my career with MS technologies because I've been trying to wean myself off of MS for career reasons and just the enjoyment of crossplatform Python.

So I'm more than likely going to take this opportunity, it includes a job title change to 'xxxx developer' and I'd be mentored by a 12 year C# on .Net veteran with a degree from Northwestern, and the rest of my office (which if full of developers). I didn't pursue this path before because the company was in turmoil for a while, and the old management didn't meet me halfway on my career development. I'm also slightly fearful of C# not clicking with my brain like Python has.

My end goal is to get into fulltime dev work, I have 7 years experience with MS based systems/.Net web application deployment so I'm not unfamiliar. I think this is the no brainer way forward.

Should I take up the challenge? Or simply try to break into fulltime professional dev work staying with Python exclusively? My thoughts are that I'm much more marketable with professional dev experience in anything, rather than hobbyist only. This is an insanely easy way to have my job title to Developer, which is worth it's weight in gold for any future career development.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Hobbyist/part time is not going to cut it on a resume.

If you can state and show that you have worked with a language and/or technical details of an OS for 3-4 years; then you can try to sell yourself with that experience.

How you get to that point is your choice.

 

[Obsoleet]

I agree with that, sounds very true to me. I was leaning that way. This is my path of least resistance to breaking into development fulltime and finally having a mentor to help me learn the right way.

I'm going to install VS Express but any learning materials suggested for C#? I'm going to have to throw myself into this to catch up and do the best I can do.

 

[EagleKeeper]

This is the book I used in a Community college two years ago to learn with, over a two semester period.

They went chapter by chapter and used the examples

Granted that I have a lifetime of programming experience which made understanding the concepts easy. I sluffed off the first semester in class :wub:

 

[Obsoleet]

Just getting my toes wet but so far this stuff (C#) is weird. Curly braces are a terrible idea, and the whole thing feels foreign as can be. I'm afraid I can't back down from this opportunity because I'm going to get a lot out of it but I'm not sure I'd abandon Python for C# using free-will. I'm definitely going to continue on with Python.

 

[Markbnj]

That is a very tough decision. My sympathies. On the other hand... great problem to have! I'd like to say "take any professional opportunity that gets you moving down your chosen path, and you can always tweak your specialization later." That's true to some extent, but it would be inaccurate to say that this decision will not have lasting consequences. Once you start working it's a lot harder to maintain compentency in tools you don't use every day. Time is limited, and so is the capacity to absorb information. So it is probably accurate to suggest that if you begin as a .NET developer you will stay a .NET developer for a signficiant period of time.

There's nothing wrong with that from an employment prospects point of view, at least in the medium term. Microsoft is the new corporate standard for line of business apps and there will be work in that sector for a long time to come.

That said, Microsoft is not the cool kid on the block anymore, and for good reasons. T-shirt and jeans jobs in startups with growth potential are mostly happening on the open source side, again for good reasons. So it all depends on what sort of environment you see yourself in, and what your goals are. It would be hard to turn down the current opportunity, but if it doesn't lead where you want to be then what good is it? That's the real decision, imo.

 

[Jaydip]

C# is awesome period! on a serious note I consider it to be very mature and it has got plenty of opportunities.I would say go with C# full time.

 

[Obsoleet]

That is a very tough decision. My sympathies. On the other hand... great problem to have! I'd like to say "take any professional opportunity that gets you moving down your chosen path, and you can always tweak your specialization later." That's true to some extent, but it would be inaccurate to say that this decision will not have lasting consequences. Once you start working it's a lot harder to maintain compentency in tools you don't use every day. Time is limited, and so is the capacity to absorb information. So it is probably accurate to suggest that if you begin as a .NET developer you will stay a .NET developer for a significant period of time.

There's nothing wrong with that from an employment prospects point of view, at least in the medium term. Microsoft is the new corporate standard for line of business apps and there will be work in that sector for a long time to come.

That said, Microsoft is not the cool kid on the block anymore, and for good reasons. T-shirt and jeans jobs in startups with growth potential are mostly happening on the open source side, again for good reasons. So it all depends on what sort of environment you see yourself in, and what your goals are. It would be hard to turn down the current opportunity, but if it doesn't lead where you want to be then what good is it? That's the real decision, imo.

^ Pretty much describes exactly the torment I'm going through on this one.

It feels good to know my manager has this faith in me to take this on. But it may very well have lasting consequences, and to be honest I'm not sure how adept I am at maintaining skills in something I'm not using everyday. My honest assessment is 'not very well', I'm an above average person, not a prodigy. I say the less than modest sounding 'above average' because the average person can't stop running into our family cars when stopped at red lights.

I'm flat on the future of .Net as a framework, and C# seems to have a bit more legs in it (mostly thanks to Mono).. it's still dependent on Microsoft's success. If a competent enterprise competitor would ever show up. There's still no slick package out there to drop in / sell besides AD+Exchange+Office. And about 10 years ago, there were many things the .Net ecosystem had solutions to that were best-in-class and in many cases the only reasonable solutions.
Today I feel .Net in particular has nearly gone into a 'enterprise application' phase, which is where it excels and is a 1st class citizen in the corporations that buy the MS package (which they buy for good reasons like all the trained labor available), but for web backend it's just about pointless unless you're a part of that buy-in.

That said, I'm not positive on a lot of technologies today. Besides Python (and plenty of people feel differently than I do). I think we're on the cusp of a post-'Java' (and 'C#') age and I see Python as the best link to the past and present with viability into the future due to fitting the needs of quick time to market webapplications pretty well.

I may push to do more SQL related work than take on C#. That wouldn't really conflict with what I feel is the best way forward with my career and personal interests (which I'd like to keep together). The big question, can I land a dev job without taking this offer up? Real tough question. I believe I'd be able to land some sort of work eventually, and as a fall-back my plan has been Linux devops. Where Python shines almost as much as Ruby.

 

[douglasb]

It depends on where you live, but from what I have seen, C# jobs seem to be more plentiful than most other languages (Java and PHP excluded). I certainly don't see very many people looking specifically for Python developers.

If you have a formal Computer Science education (or sufficient work experience), you will find that language choice really doesn't matter a whole lot other than determining which IDE's and tools/resources are available to you. In this regard, you could certainly do a lot worse than C#, which is one of the better languages out there IMO. Also, many places will hire a good programmer even without experience in a specific language, so don't think that taking a C# job will close all doors for future Python work.

If you don't like curly braces, you will find that they are pretty hard to avoid, as they are prevalent in quite a few languages (and even CSS, for that matter).

My current job is .NET development, and I find myself doing a LOT more SQL than I care for. I wouldn't be too surprised if you were able to find a niche doing mostly SQL and pick up the finer points of C# as you go.

 

[Train]

With MS now making Xamarin a 1st class partner, C# just became the greatest language to currently work with, IMO.

What other environment lets you fire up an awesome IDE, create a single project that can target iOS, Android, WP, and Win8 all at once?

Then open up another project that targets the Xbox. And people tell me Java is portable? no.

 

[Obsoleet]

With MS now making Xamarin a 1st class partner, C# just became the greatest language to currently work with, IMO.

What other environment lets you fire up an awesome IDE, create a single project that can target iOS, Android, WP, and Win8 all at once?

Then open up another project that targets the Xbox. And people tell me Java is portable? no.

I agree, the Xamarin stuff is really cool. Definitely the top attraction. I'm of the mindset that to jump in this late in the Java or C# game is less than ideal though. Those trains have mostly left the station. For the old Java/C# guys that started in the beginning, it's a great setup to be 'stuck' with. I have always wanted to make the best of missing out on that expertise and hop on either Python (not that Python is new but it's ideal in my mind) or the serverside/clientside JS excitement going on today.
Mainly referring to stuff like Meteor. Perhaps a little too cutting edge for my taste (clientside DB API?), which is why I'm more interested in the tried-and-true Django path. Let others sort out the mess with clientside business logic, securing that ect. until I spend time on it.

It depends on where you live, but from what I have seen, C# jobs seem to be more plentiful than most other languages (Java and PHP excluded). I certainly don't see very many people looking specifically for Python developers.

If you have a formal Computer Science education (or sufficient work experience), you will find that language choice really doesn't matter a whole lot other than determining which IDE's and tools/resources are available to you. In this regard, you could certainly do a lot worse than C#, which is one of the better languages out there IMO. Also, many places will hire a good programmer even without experience in a specific language, so don't think that taking a C# job will close all doors for future Python work.

If you don't like curly braces, you will find that they are pretty hard to avoid, as they are prevalent in quite a few languages (and even CSS, for that matter).

My current job is .NET development, and I find myself doing a LOT more SQL than I care for. I wouldn't be too surprised if you were able to find a niche doing mostly SQL and pick up the finer points of C# as you go.

It's mostly going to be 1. data migration with 2nd emphasis on supporting our old .Net based CMS and supporting enterprise Dynamics. So I'd expect a lot of SQL. I'd prefer mostly SQL as it helps me in my hobbyist work and professional work.

It seems kinda shitty to avoid .net this long then hop into it now. In a way i got lucky to avoid all of that (because IMO it was the way to go for the past 10 years for sure). But if i put 'C# dev' on my resume, that's what my job calls are going to be for, there's too many jobs for C# out there. And the programmers taking the ideal python jobs will be the experts and really impressive people.


I think there's a reasonable middle ground though.
I'll keep doing my Python on my own, and when my current workload in the office dies down so much that they need me to do some C#/data migrating work, I will. I think that would make me feel like i still have my python dev/devops opportunity open that I've been grooming myself for, I don't have to stop using what I truly love to do on my own, and still keep an open mind about C# and exploit the opportunity as it opens up.

I'm just not going to abandon Python at home right now in favor of C# as I was thinking. That was too much separation anxiety for me. But I do need to stick to one or the other, rather than build towards 'master of nothing'. The tooling is completely different, VS which I'm uncomfortable with in Windows vs Linux (that's where I do most of my Python at least). Too many dreams about moving onto Django, and all my cool code ideas I'm working on down the drain. Stuff I can't really do in C# on .Net because most of my ideas involve operating on an Ubuntu server and Windows servers, or were conceived as supporting Windows/Mac/Linux (and they do, basically with no extra effort).
Some of the stuff I'm doing I develop or work on a linux box at home, then take to work and run in their production Windows servers. I love it and not going to give it up, when the time comes I'll learn C# piecemeal.

 

[Markbnj]

It depends on where you live, but from what I have seen, C# jobs seem to be more plentiful than most other languages (Java and PHP excluded). I certainly don't see very many people looking specifically for Python developers.

Just as a point of reference Dice.com today, for the U.S. as a whole, has 4068 python related job listings vs. 8600 or so for C#. So twice as many C# openings, but the python openings are not inconsiderable either.

 

[Train]

I'm of the mindset that to jump in this late in the Java or C# game is less than ideal though.

That makes no sense at all. It sounds like you are trying to justify staying in your comfort zone and not learning anything new.

 

[KB]

Just getting my toes wet but so far this stuff (C#) is weird. Curly braces are a terrible idea, and the whole thing feels foreign as can be. I'm afraid I can't back down from this opportunity because I'm going to get a lot out of it but I'm not sure I'd abandon Python for C# using free-will. I'm definitely going to continue on with Python.

Haha, when I see python I say the opposite: OMG where are the curly braces?!?!
If you do web developer and do javascript, C# looks so much better than python.

Once you get over the whole curly braces thing I think C# will come easy. You might not even need python again as you will then want to stay in curly braces world with Java.

 

[Obsoleet]

That makes no sense at all. It sounds like you are trying to justify staying in your comfort zone and not learning anything new.

It's mostly the discomfort with the increased vendor-lock with the premier framework being one that is pretty much fully mature and IMO past it's glory days.
But you very well be right, I may be coming up with excuses and not being honest with myself. I'm not sure on that yet. I find self introspection for me sorts itself out in due time. I change my mind a bit, and then finally land on the truth.

I'm pretty sure my conclusion to wait for the C# work to come to me at work, and continue on my Python work at home (which I genuinely enjoy) is the best way to handle this. If I were already a Python pro that had it all down pat, I'd just wholesale migrate over but I'm not comfortable doing that at this point.

Haha, when I see python I say the opposite: OMG where are the curly braces?!?!
If you do web developer and do javascript, C# looks so much better than python.

Once you get over the whole curly braces thing I think C# will come easy. You might not even need python again as you will then want to stay in curly braces world with Java.

You may be correct about this. I've obviously used JS and curly braces, but not really any significant amount of time. I see braceless code as beautiful and elegant. In my mind, it makes sense to have what humans prefer, which is indentation that people use alongside the required braces- to be used as well for the machine! Why have both? Make the computer do the dirty work.

Nothing's ever perfect, I just find using what human's by and large prefer (indentation), making sense as being what the compiler also has to come to grips with.
Of course there are fears that one guy may have 2 space tabs vs 4 space tabs, but in reality while I'm sure it has happened to more than a few people- I don't think that comes up all too often. It's by convention and I think those are fears of non-users.
I'd be surprised if anyone in this forum doesn't use 4 space tabs for their Python code. You'd be kind of a weird guy to be so picky to break convention. And I'd run it through an autoformatter anyway (which braced code needs to look uniform and nice itself).

 

[Train]

It's mostly the discomfort with the increased vendor-lock with the premier framework being one that is pretty much fully mature and IMO past it's glory days.

increased vendor lock? MS is open sourcing more now than ever.

Adding in iOS and Android as out of the box compile targets? Removing platform restrictions from .Net libraries?

dropping their own solutions in favor of OSS community winners (like dropping MS Ajax framework for jQuery) is vendor lock?

c'mon man, what year are you living in?

 

[Merad]

I'd be surprised if anyone in this forum doesn't use 4 space tabs for their Python code. You'd be kind of a weird guy to be so picky to break convention. And I'd run it through an autoformatter anyway (which braced code needs to look uniform and nice itself).

Lol, you're really showing your newbieness. Poll a dozen developers about their code formatting, variable naming preferences, etc, and you'll get 14 different opinions.

 

[Obsoleet]

increased vendor lock? MS is open sourcing more now than ever.

Adding in iOS and Android as out of the box compile targets? Removing platform restrictions from .Net libraries?

dropping their own solutions in favor of OSS community winners (like dropping MS Ajax framework for jQuery) is vendor lock?

c'mon man, what year are you living in?

They're getting better, because they have to. But don't get me wrong, I'm not against it. I'm not anti-MS anymore than I'm anti-Oracle or any other for-profit. Just saying .Net only runs on Windows, but you're suggesting that's in the process of changing? The only option I know that's crossplatform is Mono, which IMO kind of defeats the purpose to it. If I'm doing C# I want to be in 1st class.

I'm fired up about this opportunity, and about transitioning into this work. He mentioned today there's plenty of money to send me to any formal training to get me up to speed and so forth, not to mention his mentorship being 12 years professional experience with .Net is just about the most you could possibly have.
I'm just not giving up my Python efforts at home, if I leave the company that's the direction I intend to take.

Lol, you're really showing your newbieness. Poll a dozen developers about their code formatting, variable naming preferences, etc, and you'll get 14 different opinions.

Well for one, to respond to the personal slight- I am a noob at this. So? I can't dominate in every aspect of life (yet).
Not to be defensive but I'm always working towards it and you would be shocked at how the power of the will has made me good at many things, and taken me many places in life so far. There's a good reason why my manager wants an unprofessional coder to takeover development duties. Try dismissing that one. I'm good. I'm reliable. A relative coding noob and still being hand picked for a platform and language I know zero about. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Regardless, it sounds like you are talking in general. Which it sounds like you are to make your point. In Python? The challenge still stands. Anyone here use Python and not follow tab setting conventions from PEP8 (4 space tabs)? There's no reason not to follow convention. I'm fully aware it's not a rule, but all of my anecdotal evidence shows that most of us follow that concept at least.

 

[beginner99]

That said, I'm not positive on a lot of technologies today. Besides Python (and plenty of people feel differently than I do). I think we're on the cusp of a post-'Java' (and 'C#') age and I see Python as the best link to the past and present with viability into the future due to fitting the needs of quick time to market webapplications pretty well.

c# and Java are here to stay for decades. Especially Java. It powers a lot of server to server code and web applications. There is such so much legacy code it will not be replaced easily or anytime soon. Plus Java has a huge, huge amount of libraries for basically everything.

Nothing against python but it lacks certain essential features like proper multi-threading. Also breaking backwards compatibility isn't great. You have to have different versions installed depending on the libraries you use. And forget 64-bit python on windows.

 

[Markbnj]

Nothing against python but it lacks certain essential features like proper multi-threading. Also breaking backwards compatibility isn't great.

I agree with that. Python doesn't have the cohesion in its design and implementation that C# has. The main problem with C# is that it's tied to Microsoft's ecosystem, and despite interesting technologies like Xamarin I really don't think it is going to migrate out into the wild. If I had to guess what the future looks like, it would be lightweight frameworks like node.js on the server side, and javascript on the client. Python works fine for scripts and quickly solving specific computational problems, and it worked well-enough for template-driven systems like Django, but I see those going out the window soon anyway. And in terms of threading, it's nice to have but too expensive on the server-side anyway. Evented I/O is where large-scale back ends are headed.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

They're getting better, because they have to. But don't get me wrong, I'm not against it. I'm not anti-MS anymore than I'm anti-Oracle or any other for-profit. Just saying .Net only runs on Windows, but you're suggesting that's in the process of changing? The only option I know that's crossplatform is Mono, which IMO kind of defeats the purpose to it. If I'm doing C# I want to be in 1st class.

I'm fired up about this opportunity, and about transitioning into this work. He mentioned today there's plenty of money to send me to any formal training to get me up to speed and so forth, not to mention his mentorship being 12 years professional experience with .Net is just about the most you could possibly have.
I'm just not giving up my Python efforts at home, if I leave the company that's the direction I intend to take.



Well for one, to respond to the personal slight- I am a noob at this. So? I can't dominate in every aspect of life (yet).
Not to be defensive but I'm always working towards it and you would be shocked at how the power of the will has made me good at many things, and taken me many places in life so far. There's a good reason why my manager wants an unprofessional coder to takeover development duties. Try dismissing that one. I'm good. I'm reliable. A relative coding noob and still being hand picked for a platform and language I know zero about. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Regardless, it sounds like you are talking in general. Which it sounds like you are to make your point. In Python? The challenge still stands. Anyone here use Python and not follow tab setting conventions from PEP8 (4 space tabs)? There's no reason not to follow convention. I'm fully aware it's not a rule, but all of my anecdotal evidence shows that most of us follow that concept at least.

Wow...nice humility on your part.

Wasn't this the guy that said .NET was a dead end not too long ago?

 

[Obsoleet]

c# and Java are here to stay for decades. Especially Java. It powers a lot of server to server code and web applications. There is such so much legacy code it will not be replaced easily or anytime soon. Plus Java has a huge, huge amount of libraries for basically everything.

Nothing against python but it lacks certain essential features like proper multi-threading. Also breaking backwards compatibility isn't great. You have to have different versions installed depending on the libraries you use. And forget 64-bit python on windows.

^ this.
Though breaking compatibility is a luxury that the enterprise stuff doesn't have. I only really use Python in Linux, is there an issue with 64bit Python in Windows that I'm unaware of?
I have my small applications such as an IRC server running on Windows Servers at work without issue. I'll have to check but I'm pretty sure it's the 64bit version.

I agree with that. Python doesn't have the cohesion in its design and implementation that C# has. The main problem with C# is that it's tied to Microsoft's ecosystem, and despite interesting technologies like Xamarin I really don't think it is going to migrate out into the wild. If I had to guess what the future looks like, it would be lightweight frameworks like node.js on the server side, and javascript on the client. Python works fine for scripts and quickly solving specific computational problems, and it worked well-enough for template-driven systems like Django, but I see those going out the window soon anyway. And in terms of threading, it's nice to have but too expensive on the server-side anyway. Evented I/O is where large-scale back ends are headed.

^ this. And I think Microsoft agrees with you on that bullish view on Javascript.

Python is CPU performance limited, I think everyone that uses it knows that. We just don't care if it does what we ask of it. Which is quite a bit. Like Ruby, it got a boost too thanks to the shift to webapps where almost anything works as well as the rest thanks for the most part. I understand if someone doesn't like it for that reason. There's plenty of choices out there.

I describe Python as the best link to the past and present. I'm not sure what the future holds, maybe some sort of paradigm shift from OOP or some sort of functional programming. Something that handles threading like the garbage collectors handle memory today.
Either way, from the old guard, it's a very reasonable choice to settle on. I didn't think jumping into Java, C++, C# or the rest was as wise as Python, which while being 'old guard' is actually gaining momentum today at the loss of many others.

Wow...nice humility on your part.

Wasn't this the guy that said .NET was a dead end not too long ago?

You'd be surprised how quickly I admit my failings as well. But you wouldn't be criticizing that.

Anyway I don't know if dead is the word for .Net. I don't think I said that as it sounds a little extreme.

I did a little searching to read my old posts, and I stand by this 100%.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34317994&postcount=14

Note my quote-

All that said, to dissuade you from a platform being backed away from (.Net) from a sole-source providers (MS).. C# is a great language itself. Has nothing to do with the rest of my argument though.

BAM!

I'll admit I may have been wrong about the decline of C# usage, in the near term. Longterm I do suspect Java holds up more than C# due to entrenchment.
I am not and haven't been a fan of moving new product to .Net. Would you really disagree with that? Seems to me as shortsighted. Or even jumping on the bandwagon at this point. Everything I've seen Mark post on the topic is almost exactly how I feel and see things as well.
I was disappointed that my department decided to build their new product on it, when we had the chance for a clean break. It's just too convenient for corporations that offer solutions to other major corporations. I'd never deny that appeal. The real reason is inertia, everyone I work with is a .Net/C# expert, the time to market is much faster and the benefits of moving to something else just isn't there in our case.
No one cares what it's built on, but if it's reasonable financially to migrate off .Net, I would. To almost anything else, just something less tied to MS like Java or Python. Java is Oracle, but they don't have the same financial incentive to lock anyone in. And Microsoft appears to abandon technology quickly. It's hard for me to trust them, they go where the wind blows. Now with Windows 8 the focus appears to be to put web developers on equal footing with C#/.net. That's fine I suppose but slightly disconcerting to the .Net people, as it should be.

Windows8 is such an inconsistent mess it was the last straw for me, I've lost my last shred of interest in what they bring to the table. Won't be buying it. Win7 is where I'll stay, with Ubuntu. Eventually just Ubuntu, with Win7 in a virtual machine if I need Visual Studio at home.

That said, do I abandon the opportunity to transition into C# development? No. C# is not .Net, it's actually a top notch if not the top notch language out there. Tough for anyone to judge that, as most of the time people say what they're used to is the best. I don't do that. I love Python, that doesn't make it the best language spec out there. Doesn't matter that it more than likely isn't, it's a great package in it's own right.

It will take a bit for my current workload to dwindle down, and I'm going to continue using Python at home and make that my next career move anyway. It won't hurt me to do some C#, and I have very little experience with a statically typed language and while I dislike the .Net idea overall- C# is a top shelf language to learn more about.

There's a difference between the two. I've always been positive on C#, and remain negative on .Net (not that there's not a ton of work and good things about it, I just would not move product to it today if I were making those decisions). I stand by my criticism, and anyone else's criticism of .Net for that matter.
If there is a moment to break the vendor-lock, I would seize it.

You will hear me continue to be negative on .Net.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Mmm k, I'm sure your loads of experience allow you to give out advice and make future predictions. Clearly, the .NET architects should come to you for advice, you do know a little Python after all.

I'm not trying to be rude but you give out advice that has no basis and is completely based on your admittedly very little experience. I don't even think you understand what .NET is, .NET is a core part of C#. You should do some research on high-level languages, .NET framework, JVM, bytecode, etc...

Get a lot more experience, use the right tool for the right job, and don't treat programming as a philosophy.

 

[Obsoleet]

Haha, well I didn't think I'd have to lay out my resume here but I have built webapplications for companies in the past. It was a little rude, while Python is the first time I've really found myself falling in love with coding.. and there's no shame or some sort of ding on my reputation because I'm not a top-notch Python programmer. You're going to attempt to use that against me rather than attack my argument?

I started on BASIC on a Commodore128 hammering out GOTOs before you likely knew what a computer was, and moved onto Perl, VB, Coldfusion, Javascript, and dabs of C# and Java over the past few decades. Regularly I check into the latest tech like Node.js and try my hand at it, which I have. Currently doing some messing around with Meteor, which I'm not impressed with the increasing move to pushing business logic to the clientside with a full DB API.. but anyway-
I'm not a fulltime dev, but I'd question between the two of us, who has been around more, done more, or knows more about the state of the art.

There is a big philosophical gap in programming, that's just reality. All my self-appointed programming gods ie. Linus and RMS are all fairly philosophical about it. I tend to agree with them, but I'm not sure where you're extracting my philosophy from any of my words. I'm pragmatic and use what works best. You mad because many of us are down on .Net? Not sure why you'd be attacking me personally if you weren't, so I guess I win.
And btw, I have many .Net architect friends, many more than you. They're all starting to diversify out of the .Net world.
Go and Node being the main attractions in downtown Chicago where I work. What's your job? Where do you work?

Only the sloths are not diversifying out of .Net. I was selected BY a .Net Arch to takeover development, you might be surprised how much my advice is taken. We're all pretty much on the same page in the Fortune 100 company I work at, trying to abandon .Net.

Regardless, .Net isn't a core part of C#. .Net is a framework. C# is a language specification.. are you SURE you know better than I do?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa569283.aspx

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

ok, best of luck to you