Mitch Wheat - Treat the cause, not the symptoms!

A few weeks ago I was talking to several developers and a Microsoft evangelist. The topic of conversation turned to the relative proportions of web forms versus windows forms development. One of the developers (who is primarily an ASP.NET developer) put forward his strongly held view that the ratio is at least 80% : 20% in favour of web development. My own view was that it would be much closer to 60% : 40% with web development in the lead. The man from MS, who gets to see a wider cross section of the industry than most, said “It’s actually closer to 50:50”.

The point I’m making is not that my estimate was closer but that it is easy to believe that someone else problems / solutions / environment look exactly like your own: experience gives you a wider perspective. It’s a problem faced by software designers and developers everyday: each project participant has their own view of the world.

Now I wonder if he knows the relative proportion of C# versus VB.NET developers…did someone say “language jihad”? Are you predominately a web or windows forms developer?