A sense of Entitlement?…stop your whining!
Most developers spend a lot of time learning. Who can claim an entire lifetime career invested in a single language, or platform?…VB6 to C# to TSQL to JavaScript to Ruby and so on. Sure there are plenty of professions that don’t necessitate quite the same level of time investment in learning the tools of a ‘craft’, but if you stand still you should expect to go nowhere.
I have worked with lots of different types over the years and developers are no different to
most, there will always be people at work who think they are simply ‘entitled’, owed a sweet ride; some think their employers owe it to them, others think their colleagues do and in society some think their government does. Lately with the whole Windows 8, Silverlight / WPF ‘will they’, ‘wont they’ deliberations in the developer community, there has been some resentful noises emanating from developers who feel left behind by Microsoft who have gone as far to express fear for their careers and encouraged others to follow suit. I find this staggering, lacking self belief, lazy and in some cases cynical attention seeking rabble rousing.
I have invested plenty in WPF but when it comes down to it, if I have to learn something new because there is simply something better?…then I welcome the education. Perhaps had I been ahead of my time I might have incited a riot when VB6 was outmoded by .NET 1.0, instead I chose to see it as an opportunity, at the time I was faced with either moving on to Java, Swing AWT , JSP and J2EE or to .NET, WinForms, ASP.Net and all the wonderment of web services and remoting (tongue firmly plated in cheek).
Personally I don’t believe Microsoft is about to abandon XAML but if they do then I will treat it as an opportunity and expect that history will show me not to be alone.
I also found remarkable that
http://forums.silverlight.net/t/230502.aspx/1?Windows+8+apps+going+html5+wtf
and part 2 of that resulted in more than 20 million views each. As for constant learning, I guess, it is more about life choices and what motivates people. Perhaps, for a consultant, who should offer the latest and greatest trends for the new applications it does apply. From other hand I’ve seen people who made very good living staying with the same technology for two decades ( e.g. Foxpro for MS/DOS and its Linux port ) and still keep their jobs. One may find such a career boring, but it is a personal choice, isn’t it ? Or other extreme case ( more in your post spirit ) very prolific writer and developer Mark Gunderloy who had made his living from Microsoft technologies suddenly decided that Microsoft is evil and used it as a opportunity to move to Ruby on Rails.
After all, if abandoning of XAML does happen, it won’t necessarily result in something better ( maybe software field is old enough and it is time to have some regress in it).
[Reply]
Michael Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 9:11 am
I meant Mike Gunderloy not Mark.
[Reply]
Simon Segal Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 10:44 am
@Michael Yes there is plenty of scope for people to ’sit’ on a technology or skill for a very long time and eek out a long career on the back of that. Those that fit the MO that I have come across over time, often do not actively pay much interest in advances (or regressions) in the technologies that sprout up over time.
[Reply]