Apparently people keep forgetting that laptops and 2-1 hybrids are desktops as well.
Microsoft is doing pretty well there, to the point that in many shopping mall shops in Europe, Android tablets have been slowly being replaced by hybrid laptops running Windows 10.
And all together they sell less than a fifth of the number of mobile devices being sold. There is a reason that MS is running away from Windows and that they put .Net Framework in permanent maintenance mode. They don’t even want to spend money supporting their own browser engine.
I’ve never said that .Net wasn’t great. I said it would be dumb to tie your career to .Net Framework that is Windows only and is maintenance mode instead of .Net Core. I’ve had enough conversations with you on HN that I know you know the difference.
And I’ve said that most of the energy is going toward mobile, the web and services. No one outside of game makers are making money selling mobile apps. But they are making money selling services that users interact with over the web and mobile - not the desktop.
Windows is doing pretty well across 80% of desktop, laptop and 2-1 hybrid devices.
As mentioned, I spent the last 5 years doing Forms/WPF/UWP, and there is plenty of work there. Just as there is for anyone wanting to bother with either Qt or macOS.
At least in Europe no one starves by focusing on being a desktop developer.
Again, I know you know this stuff - you were involved in the discussion when it was posted here.
As mentioned, I spent the last 5 years doing Forms/WPF/UWP, and there is plenty of work there.
There were also jobs for Windows CE developers in 2015 after MS abandoned it in 2007, would that have been a good career move?
Microsoft said that they are only focusing on compatibility with Windows for .Net framework going forward and they will be adding features to .Net Core that won’t be ported to .Net Framework.
This is now changing. Microsoft has shifted its position so that .NET Framework is in near-maintenance mode and that new features come only to .NET Core. Last month, Microsoft’s Damian Edwards stated that ASP.NET Core will only run on .NET Core starting from 3.0, the next major version.
From the C# program manager.
Async streams, indexers and ranges all rely on new framework types that will be part of .NET Standard 2.1. As Immo describes in his post Announcing .NET Standard 2.1, .NET Core 3.0 as well as Xamarin, Unity and Mono will all implement .NET Standard 2.1, but .NET Framework 4.8 will not. This means that the types required to use these features won’t be available when you target C# 8.0 to .NET Framework 4.8.
.NET Core is yet to be embraced by most enterprises, everyone is waiting for .NET 5 to actually make the switch. Too much software is now making the transition into .NET Framework 7.x, to bother with half baked support from Core to many APIs like EF6, WCF and components from third party vendors.
From where I am standing, we don't care what Microsoft calls it this month, it is .NET.
It’s not about what you care about the industry is definitely moving further away from Windows desktop apps as it’s main focus and is definitely moving toward services and mobile. How much clearer can you get than the CEO of MS saying they are distancing themselves from Windows as a priority? If enterprises are embracing Linux even on Azure, their definitely not using .Net Framework.
Today more Linux VMs are being hosted by Azure than Windows. Microsoft is making serious investments in cross platform development and making Linux a first class development environment on Windows with improvements in WSL.
EF6 and WCF is legacy. Really? Are we arguing about SOAP in 2019?
It’s not about what Microsoft is “calling it”. It’s about where all of the future emphasis of .Net improvements are.
So REST instead of SOAP is a “coffee shop trend”? That migration has been going on for at least a decade.
We already know the “trend” that .Net is going in from no less than the program manager of .Net. That “trend” is no major new features for .Net Framework and it will be stuck at 4.8.x forever while all of the innovation is happening with .Net Core.
We also know the “trend” of MS’s focus from no less than the CEO of Microsoft - a de-emphasis on Windows and an emphasis on cloud and moving to where the customers are - Linux and services for both web and mobile users.
Don’t you think it’s quite telling that the biggest news for Windows 10 lately is improved support for Linux via WSL 2.0 and how much emphasis is being put on VS Code?
It is, just right now I am working for a customer where SOAP keeps being relevant as ever.
.NET Core will be relevant for this kind of customers in about 5 years time, again we are still targeting 4.7.2 for bleeding edge customers.
Microsoft wants to win the hearts of FOSS developers that buy Macs as pretty UNIX for developing GNU/Linux software and are unhappy with the latest "Pro" offerings without having ever written a single line of Objective-C or Swift, that's all.
It is, just right now I am working for a customer where SOAP keeps being relevant as ever.
This might surprise you, but the world doesn’t revolve around your niche.
NET Core will be relevant for this kind of customers in about 5 years time, again we are still targeting 4.7.2 for bleeding edge customers.
By definition, customers using .Net Framework and SOAP are not bleeding edge. They wouldn’t have been bleeding edge 5 years ago. The industry was already moving toward REST.
Microsoft wants to win the hearts of FOSS developers that buy Macs as pretty UNIX for developing GNU/Linux software and are unhappy with the latest "Pro" offerings without having ever written a single line of Objective-C or Swift, that's all.
Are you really saying that all of Microsoft from the C# Program Manager up to the CEO is wrong for focusing more on mobile, services, and the web than Windows desktop because your niche is still focused on the desktop?
You do realize that most of the world’s only interaction with a “computer” is via the web and mobile don’t you?
It’s not just the 1% of app developers making money developing apps. There are plenty of mobile developers making money working for companies that sell services that customers use on mobile devices. I was making a living over a decade ago doing “mobile development” working for a company deploying to ruggedized Win CE devices.
The only way to make money from people using “computers” in developing countries is by targeting services at people using mobile devices. They definitely aren’t using Windows PCs and the companies creating services aren’t hosting on Windows.
As far as “FAANG” related products, none of those companies are making most of their money from selling apps on the App Store. They are also making money from services/advertising that people access via the cell phone.
You don’t make money statistically as a mobile developer by trying to sell an app on the store. You make money from working for a company as a mobile developer just as you do from being a web developer.
And how does WPF and Win Forms help there? You’re (hopefully) not communicating with mobile apps and websites using SOAP.
I know IIS like the back of my hand - heck I was deploying Classic ASP apps to it almost 20 years ago. But, I see where the industry - and MS are going. I’m not going to stick my head in the sand like VB6 users 10 years after it was abandoned by MS.
> "Microsoft Surface sells are estimated to be 20% of Mac sales."
I'd say hardware sales like that are impressive, coming from a software company.
Apple's original core competency was creating hardware, with the software existing to drive hardware sales. (That there is a "hack" in "hackintosh" suggests that this should still be true today. They don't want you to buy their OS and run it on your own hardware, but they're fine with you buying their hardware and running your own OS on it.) Microsoft's core 'competency' has always been software. (I am of course abusing the term 'competency' in this case...)
Their other products, while locked down to forbid running third party operating systems, are still nevertheless hardware. With the exception of itunes and safari on Windows, virtually everything Apple does involves selling hardware to consumers.
I remember one story about a computer store in old days that carried lots of systems and parts. The new management decided to optimize this and carry only the popular choices and thus increase the profits. But the profits dropped instead. Before that the place was frequented by tech lovers. When their non-tech friends asked what and where to buy, they referred them there. Once the place was not good for tech people, the schema broke.
Mac sales may be small, but they are important part of the system. Who will write all these apps and on what hardware?
Developers will buy Macs and write apps for iOS regardless because that’s where the money is. Just like game developers use to buy expensive, obtuse, proprietary setups to write games for mobile.
So what? I was speaking about all PC OEMs selling Windows 10 devices, not only Microsoft.
I also posted estimates where computer sells are a fifth of mobile sells.
Apple hardware is hardly relevant outside US and a couple of first tier countries.
And neither are PC sales. Most people’s only computer is a phone and most of the money coming from those people are on mobile.
Mobile phones are good for exactly that, phone calls, Internet and a couple of service apps, hardly for producing content.
And unless you’re Microsoft or Adobe, you’re not making money selling PC software to produce content. Companies making money on software are either doing it indirectly through services or by producing applications/services running on the web or mobile.
So can you name one software vendor outside of Microsoft and Adobe making any real money selling desktop software - besides games?
How fast do you think a startup founder would get laughed out of an investor’s office of he started his pitch with “I have this great idea for a Windows Application”?
On the development side, it would be crazy for any developer to tie their horse to .Net Framework when MS has publicly said that it is in maintenance mode.
There were still a few jobs for Windows CE developers as late as 2014 even though MS abandoned it after VS 2008 (2007?). It would have been foolish for me to take such a job.
No they aren’t and you know this. .Net framework is in maintenance mode and not being actively updated with new features. That’s like saying .Net Compact Framework and .Net Core are the same thing.
As far as Azure running on Hyper V and not Linux, that’s irrelevant since developers of Azure are running in Linux VMs more than Windows VMs.
I’m not the only one “fighting hard to make the distinction”. Technically the distinction isn’t minor. One runs only on Windows, is in maintenance mode according to Microsoft and won’t get any major updates going forward and one is cross platform, actively being improved upon, and is the future of Microsoft’s development platform according to Microsoft
And you’re in Europe, do you really have an on the ground pulse of what most Fortune 500 American companies are doing? I’m frequently looking at the job boards and most greenfield projects are (unfortunately it’s my favorite language) not focused on C#/.Net at all and those that are trying to get from under both Windows licensing and the increased resources requirements and are moving toward .Net Core.
There are still holdouts for VB6 and I still see jobs wanting people to maintain them. But would you say maintaining legacy VB6 code was a good career move?
Until the company decides to change directions, you suffer from salary compression and inversions because HR decides to pay new employees market rate and (the hypothetical) you only get cost of living raises.
The last thing I want is to be tied to a company because I am not competitive in the market and then start complaining about “ageism”
And I’m on the opposite side of the country from the west coast FAANG and startup culture. I’m the definition of a standard “enterprise developer”.
What do you consider "real money"? There's a whole bunch of industry-specific software vendors like Autodesk and The Mathworks that have plenty of dependent companies still buying licenses for desktop software.
Compare that to even your middling SAAS company. I’m only saying that it is silly for someone to invest their future employability on a platform (desktop Windows) and a runtime (.Net Framework) that even MS is moving away from. Everything they announce is about Azure, .Net Core, and heck even Android these days. I’m not even saying that Windows as a server OS is the worse thing in the world - even though it’s a lot cheaper in both licensing costs and resources to use Linux even if you use .Net Core.
Microsoft is doing pretty well there, to the point that in many shopping mall shops in Europe, Android tablets have been slowly being replaced by hybrid laptops running Windows 10.