Are you an IT pro? It's no longer safe to bet your career on Microsoft Is Microsoft still a safe bet for the IT pro? In a word: No. As an IT worker, you have to gamble on which technology will keep you fed and housed over the coming years. For a really long time that has been Microsoft, but you don’t get paid on the past. Instead you need to peer into an uncertain future. The Windows 8 launch …
Yes, MS own the desktop and a shedload of servers, why should you or I care ?
The thing that drives your pay and even whether you have a job is supply and demand, not the absolute number.
In the UK, US etc almost everyone who will ever have a desktop computer already has one and given 93% market share MS can't really grow in that area.
People are gaining skills and bits of paper in Windows every day, which means that there will be excess supply of skills if the MS product set goes into any sort of decline.
Perhaps because that's 93 % & 40-50 % of "the" industry the people you are addressing are looking to work in. Suggesting an avoidance of a certain technology because of a potential over supply or under supply is naive in extremis. You learn skills and add value to those skills through your understanding of needs.
The same people gaining "bits of paper" are gaining the same bits of paper in other areas too. As such, experience matters. It's a vocational career, and that means experience will always matter more than certifications.
It's why we in the industry largely laugh (when we're not in tears) at the garbage that come of of the MBA set/ Analyst set/ PHB's etc.
No doubt you have some time at the coal face, but your advice is not correct for those new or middling in the industry. In fact, it seems very off kilter.
I note the use of the word "if" in your last sentence there. Whilst it's not about absolute numbers as you point out, nor is it entirely about the delta. The fact that Microsoft products are ubiquitous means that there is a steady turn over of opportunities regardless of whether it rises or falls. For developers in the UK and USA, by far the largest factor in availability of opportunities is the coming online of India and other nations. Something that both increases the size of the market, but also impacts on local developers due to pay differentials between countries.
if they weren't backed into a corner, would they have completely sidelined the interface they've been working on since, well since they gave it the name Windows?
If someone has the curiousity to wonder why it's called Windows (yeah I know, unusual for anyone to have curiosity these days) what are we going to tell them? Urrm a tile looks kinda like a window? its a joke
"if they weren't backed into a corner, would they have completely sidelined the interface they've been working on since, well since they gave it the name Windows?"
You have an unusual definition of the word "completely" seeing as the Desktop is still there and all the programs that were working on Windows 7 are still usable in Win 8 in the same way on any desktop machine.
I don't know what market share Windows Server HPC has in different markets, but it's certainly a lot more than 0%.
As a vendor selling enterprise software to very large organizations (global banks), we choose windows HPC because their IT depts like windows servers - certainly more than Linux servers. Can't see that changing in the next 5 years.
As HPC creeps out of labs and IT-specialist companies and into business, the market share for windows HPC (a specialized version of their windows server OS) is increasing and will increase. It isn't cutting-edge, but most IT work (and pay) isn't at the bleeding edge.
"Good scripts, the ones you are proud of, have Ifs and loops and other constructs that mean even a scripting ace will need time to make any sense of them and will be reluctant to change them."
A 'scripting ace', like a C++ ace, would have no fear in modifying another's work (if it made good sense in the grand scheme of things).
A script without Ifs and Loops is normally known as a Batch File. I mean.....SRSLY???
Apart from Joe Punter has never heard of gnome. Chances are, he's probably never even heard of UNIX/Linux either. He probably only even has a vague notion of what a "server" is, other than that's where his files and emails are.
He cruises into Comet (ha, ha!) or PC World and he sees Windows boxes or Apples. To him, that's the entire PC/IT market.
"what do people program in that customers with older OS/Browsers can still use?"
How about industry standard HTML? It's worked for years (with the exception of ****ing idiots who insist on putting in IE only "features") and is the underpinning behind the additional features available in HTML5. A good HTML5 website (application) will still be usable in browsers that do not support all of the new features - a bad one will crap itself and be unusable... if the application is still usable but not quite optimal then that is much better than not usable at all. In any case, having compatibility like this allows the application to support the required accessibility laws and guidelines.
"sorry you must use Internet Explorer 6.1 to view this website". This also reduces traffic.
a) If your site only advocates using a Swiss Cheese browser, I'd steer clear of it too. To my mind, there is only one reason you could possibly want me to use IE6...
b) You do know IE 6 is dead, right?
c) You wrote a site for yourself? Why bother with a website at all then?
"Ok, so if Silverlight is on the way out and HTML5 requires a browser that can read it, what do people program in that customers with older OS/Browsers can still use?"
AJAX when I can, Flash when I have to. I work for an organization that's not moving off IE8 for at least another 3 years. That's when we finally get to cycle out the last of our XP machines (I didn't set the policy so don't blame me).
IT people don't like windows (usually) but know how to use it.
Non-IT people don't really know anything else exists, and would grind to a halt without it.
That's why microsoft continue to be so valuable despite screwing so much up. Once you're the only platform most people know how to use it takes years of substandard delivery before you get shifted out.
I've developed scripts on all the popular operating systems but it's only when I got into shell scripting on Linux/UNIX that I got into good habits, like saving scripts to repositories and heavily commenting code.
Both of the above are in the person writing the scripts best interests, I developed the habit after writing lots of very similar scripts for file transfer for one client, 6 months down the line when they come back to have something rejigged and you look at it and think "what the hell was I drinking the night before I wrote this" or "that' s an early version I totally rewrote this ...now where is the decent version?".
Most Microsoft developers have Sourcesafe lying around if nothing else, most of the problems with Microsoft only sites is the cultures never been learned
These days I tend to also copy scripts to something like Google Drive so I have access to them whichever machine you are on, most of the cloud storage can be used as poor mans repositories, though of course versioning etc is all manual
Sourcesafe is probably why those Windows guys don't use source control.
Worst piece of frack I've ever had the misfortune to use, as it punishes you for trying to use it - and we've even had an RC broken by Sourcesafe. So we threw it away.
I now use GIT for "unofficial" projects, as you can make a repo anywhere that you have read/write access to and it does 90% of what's useful.
No reason why everyone shouldn't use it for their "personal" projects, even if you never upload the repo to anywhere it can still save your bacon.
As I said "Sourcesafe lying around if nothing else", Sourcesafe is pants and yes GIT,or SVN with say tortoise on Windows and other tools are better but it's better than absolutely nothing which is what a lot of Microsoft only shops have (talking support scripting rather than development here)
"Sourcesafe is probably why those Windows guys don't use source control."
Indeed, "Microsoft Sourcesafe" may actually be the biggest IT oxymoron since "Microsoft Works". Given that there are faster and safer alternatives that are free, you'd be mad to trust your source to the darned thing.
I had the misfortune to work somewhere that used SourceSafe once. We (i.e. the people who had to use version control) finally managed to persuade the sysadmin to set us up with a Linux box on which I had admin rights. I installed CVS and found a lovely script that would check every revision of every file out of SourceSafe and into CVS complete with the log entries, effectively replicating the entire history. Bliss! Left it running over a weekend and we never had a repository-induced snafu after that.
"Developers face the problem that MS doesn’t love them anymore, seeing us as disloyal peasants, best expressed when Visual Studio Express was intentionally crippled to produce only Metro (or No-tro, or whatever it’s called) apps."
These poor developers all got their own online Visual Team System server last week, for source control and agile project management for.. free. They could also get a year's windows phone developer account for a mere $8 too.
End users tend to like Windows 8. It's technical people that think people won't like it. Windows 8 will be big and Metro will become ubiquitous and people will start to enjoy that the apps they buy work on their phone, their tablet, their PC.
Everything I have seen so far shows end users do NOT like Windows 8's new interface. It is confusing and unproductive and very unintuitive.
I think people were a bit too harsh on Vista, but Windows 8 is getting exactly what it deserves so far.
Yup. Back in 1996, a colleague told me to get shot of all my Unix books, since Windows NT was the future. I stuck with Unix (Solaris and then Linux, with some BSD in between) and I'm damn glad I did. Recently spent a couple of months with Windows 7 on the desktop, and I was amused at what a mess it is from performance, usability and productivity perspectives.
One of the best things to consider is not being a Fandroid, iTard or WinPhoney.
That is, don't be a fanboy and cloud your vision. Bias towards any particular technology is not an attractive thing for an employer and your lack of experience on alternative technologies can make you the first person to be out of the door if your company gets taken over or there is a significant change in your company.
I know Linux/Unix/OSX and Windows. I always objectively look at the merit in anything as well as the negatives. So many other people are so biased towards certain technologies it is unreal.
Yes, you're right I got my tense wrong, I've hated Lotus Notes since 1993, I believe I was the first person to write a negative review of it, I was quite proud of the sentence "eskimos have 24 words for snow, Notes has that many 'please wait' icons for the same reason".
MS chooses not to kill Notes for reasons never made clear to me.
The reason I thought of Notes hatred being common is that so many users now have experience of Outlook that they are incredulous that Notes was actually chosen on purpose and not out of spite or revenge.
MS chooses not to include Outlook in consumer bundles of MS Office, if it did so then the pressure to ditch Notes would become unbearable.
Back in the days of the still not quite standard £2000 286, I was in on a secret squirrel manufacturer-only Notes test*. Instantly hated it with a passion.
*That's what they told us, anyway. Ooh, may have been '92
> MS chooses not to include Outlook in consumer bundles of MS Office, if it did so then the pressure to ditch Notes would become unbearable.
Er, because of all those home users buying Notes?
A few months ago a dev i know wrote an article about using Cloudy TFS to do Windows Azure Continuous build and unit testing, however it used Cerebrata Cmd Widgets and some other 3rd party tools, Microsoft contacted them and said "this looks great can we publish it on the Microsoft MSDN Newsletter" So they said yes and then had to rework the article to remove any and ALL references to InteliJ Resharper, CmdLets and some other stuff.
So they certainly don't like developers using their brains and doing something else.
....with a straight face?
No?
Okay so another pointless bandwagon chasing article then form another tech journo who like many in their arena doesn't need any tech more advanced than a tablet to do their oh so demanding job on?
Must be hard work having to think unoriginal crap up while sitting in Starbucks all day.
Actually Jason, I've spent most of the last couple of days writing C++ code to parse semi-structured data.
I don't have a tablet partly because you can't code on the bloody things, but also because when I broke mine I couldn't think of why I wold pay money to get another.
Also I prefer the coffee in Pret a Manger.
Thank you for your feedback, please enjoy the mundane Java coding that occupies your life.
"C++ to parse "semi-structured" data? You must be a masochist. "
He's willing to wade into the pigsty and argue with all of us zealots, fanboys and general nutters. I'm going with masochist.
(Nice article, btw, even if I disagreed with several parts).
No, not a masochist a C++ dev turned headhunter trying to bring order to a database of people.
OK, yes, alright a masochist, you got me,
i'm quite happy to be disagreed with, the point of what our beloved editor calls "The Connor Cycle of Career Despair" is to get ITPros thinking constructively about their careers, being 100% would have been nice but unrealistic for me.
I feel Dominic Connor was refraining from using terms like "windoze" in this article.
It's all well and good to point out flaws in MS programming languages, but this can be done with any language.
I'm yet to find a better programming language than ASP.net MVC to get a model driven site up really quickly.
Also, he never really points out his ideal alternative.
Most probably another "we should always use java" noob.
Apples for the 60 %dummies out there,
Linux for the 2% Hardore
Windows for everyone else.
I see it hard to believe windows going anywhere in a hurry, it is at the heart of all business. they way things are financially, people are not going to be jumping quick to the alternative,... which is?
"The Windows 8 launch was remarkably stealthy compared to the good old days when it was an event on an Apple scale. "
What now?
I'm in SE Asia and I can't watch any TV channel without an adm or (more commonly) multiple ads in the same rotations at the premium spots (i.e. first and last) without seeing a surface ad.
so yeah, i'm really sure the rest of your article is worth reading.
how about you get out off the mis-onformed train, take the connection at informed, and ride with the rest of us - you fucking muppet.
Heck, the orderable Surface hardware being advertised doesn't even run Windows 8, it runs Windows 8 RT instead, the almost-but-not-quite* TIFKAM-only, Windows App Store front end.
Win8RT is to Win8 what iOS is to OSX, except that you can run Win8RT apps under Win8.
Those ads are for Microsoft's iPad/Nexus/Note, and just like those there's almost no mention of the OS.
* Its stripped-down version of Office uses the desktop, nothing else is allowed to. Presumably a tacit admission that TIFKAM simply isn't suitable for non-trivial applications.
"Win8RT is to Win8 what iOS is to OSX, except that you can run Win8RT apps under Win8."
WinRT is a lot more fully-featured than iOS from what I've seen. For one easy example, can you run a multiple windowed Office suite on iOS?
"Its stripped-down version of Office uses the desktop, nothing else is allowed to. Presumably a tacit admission that TIFKAM simply isn't suitable for non-trivial applications"
IE can still run on the Desktop, as does file manager, control panel, the vastly improved Task Manager... As to "non-trivial applications", is a browser non-trivial? An email client? Probably there will be a MUI version of Office one day, but re-coding the whole thing to run that way must be an epic task.
"IE isn't a desktop app in Win8RT."
I'm literally running IE on a SurfaceRT right now. Check your facts before trying to correct someone.
"Also you're an astroturfer, so I hope you got paid for that post."
No, I'm not. False accusations as a way of discrediting someone's argument (particularly when it's a factual argument that can be checked and found that I am right), is a pretty poor means of conducting yourself.
Anyone can post speculative nonsense. The basic rule of the game has always been and always will be keep your skills relevant to a sizeable chunk of the market. It really doesn't matter which technology as long as you are willing to change and adapt. If you can't change and adapt you're in the wrong business to start with.
IT Pro's could conceivably move into web development.
If predictions and trends turn out to be on the money, Saas driven by web technology is the direction the industry is headed.
It's almost a full circle back to the days of the 'dumb terminal', where the computing power was derived from the mainframe.
The similarities are there to be examined. The 'cloud' is the mainframe, the web browser is the 'dumb terminal'
Google are pushing a massive stake in the ground when it comes to web based applications.
Online email is hardly new, but online 'office' style applications certainly are.
Imagine a future when your 'mainframe' (the cloud) is serving your entire companies office software requirements. Need to upgrade the entire companies office suite? Do it once, in the cloud.
Microsoft's business model is dying, slowly, but still dying.
The idea of purchasing multiple licenses of an office suite and having to install and maintain it on hundreds of computer hard drives will become an archaic concept.
IT Pro's could conceivably move into web development.
If predictions and trends turn out to be on the money, Saas driven by web technology is the direction the industry is headed.
It's almost a full circle back to the days of the 'dumb terminal', where the computing power was derived from the mainframe.
The similarities are there to be examined. The 'cloud' is the mainframe, the web browser is the 'dumb terminal'
Google are pushing a massive stake in the ground when it comes to web based applications.
Online email is hardly new, but online 'office' style applications certainly are.
Imagine a future when your 'mainframe' (the cloud) is serving your entire companies office software requirements. Need to upgrade the entire companies office suite? Do it once, in the cloud.
Microsoft's business model is dying, slowly, but still dying."
You do realise that MS have been pushing SaaS, the cloud and everything else you mention (in some cases for years) don't you?
"Google are pushing a massive stake in the ground when it comes to web based applications."
As are Microsoft, should you care to look.
Somehow Windows "professionals" seem to be inside a strange world where e-mail servers are somehow complex pieces of software, and .net is portable.
Seriously, if you still believe such things, go to your local library and get a book called "The Art of Unix Programming" from Eric S. Raymond and read it. If you understand that book, you might slowly understand why the rest of the world stayed with Unix or moved towards it. You might even understand why those "advanced features" of Powershell are essentially useless. You might even be able to find which pieces of software are crap and which are properly designed.
Didn't we just do this dance in the last article's comments section with you trying to find all sorts of reasons why Powershell was inferior and Windows was rubbish? Having cut my teeth on HP UNIX 11 over a decade ago and been working on Unix or Linux platforms of one kind or another pretty much ever since, I find it rather patronising to be told that if I look at UNIX I "might even understand why those advanced features of Power Shell are essentially useless." Seeing as on Monday you didn't even understand some of the features of Power Shell and were commenting that it was rubbish even then, you seem to have merely made up your mind and now adopted the position that maybe it can do some new things, but they're rubbish so you're still right.
I've used Bash and I've used Bourne before it and have been doing so for a long time. Power Shell has taken that and built on it with some nice new ideas as well. Maybe a couple of years down the line Linux will take some of the features Windows has brought in and incorporate them, just as MS have built on the design ideas of Bash. It's called progress. And your patronizing comment on how if we read more about Unix we'd value that progress less, is pretty much insulting to the principles that made UNIX what it is.
"Developers face the problem that MS doesn’t love them anymore, seeing us as disloyal peasants, best expressed when Visual Studio Express was intentionally crippled to produce only Metro (or No-tro, or whatever it’s called) apps."
You're 5 months out of date. Microsoft relented on that and have a version for Windows 8 and for Windows desktop. Because they... errr... listened to those "disloyal peasants".
Personally, as an ASP.NET/C#/SQL/XAML developer, the one thing that I'll always credit Microsoft for is that they love developers. I got a free day covering Azure, days like the DDD days, free evenings with pizza going over technologies, Microsoft people on Twitter and blogs who are happy to talk about stuff.
And honestly, ASP.NET MVC is a dynamite development platform. Nothing comes close for building a solid web application.
Surprised no real mention of platform-independent coding. I'd have thought Python, Qt or WxWidgets for GUI, other platform-independant libraries deserve a mention. Even Java, if Oracle don't (accidentally?) kill it by getting it banned from every business PC as a security nightmare.
Unix, Windows, Linux.....same arguments....how much of your budget will go towards retraining users of windows at home that Linux at work is the better option, hell even my 11 year old's school teaches them office.
your skillset is as relevant as the latest trend, as with clothes, something else comes along eventually and yes, i know lots of out-of-work Unix admins and scripters because they thnk they are still worth twice the going rate of everyone else, adapt and survive until the next big wave of technology.
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What I'd like to see is a new Windows which starts with an NT codebase like XP or Windows 7, and then modularizes everything. And I do mean everything; it should only take a dozen or so small-to-medium-sized files to boot into Safe Mode, with everything else loading after. Like old Windows and 'NIX boxes, it would have a command line "core", but it would be 64-bit and fully featured like the DOS of old (and the Linux of today). Due to it's modular nature, you could upgrade individual pieces of the OS with different vendors' software easily; or even "better" editions of Microsoft's own.
For ease of sales, MS would still sell boxed and OEM copies in particular configurations (Home, Workstation, Server, etc.), but this new approach would also let them digitally sell custom .isos of the OS specified to that company or vendor. Why include Media Player on a business machine when your company writes it's own media software? Your business is international, but the home office only uses, say, 3 languages, so why pay for 50? And so on.
And, again, being modular, a company or individual could always pay to upgrade a particular piece of the OS they might want later. It'd let MS become the service company it dreams of being, without screwing up the few good things it's always done (being consistent, for starters). This would have an added bonus of ending Service Pack headaches as you'd only need to patch the pieces installed on your system; rather then how it is now, where a Firefox or Chrome user still needs to keep IE updated 'cause of it's hooks into the rest of the OS.
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