Mason Lyngby

If you've ever attending a presentation on a software development technical topic, the law of Developers in the Audience always states that these 2 events will happen: 

1.  When the presenter makes a mistake (even a little one), there will be a jeer, snicker, giggle, or some sort of snarky behavior by someone in the audience.  It someone will be ready to pounce at a glitch or mistake and expose the presenter as a fraud.

2.  Someone will always ask for the font size to be bumped up, but the person requesting this is never sitting in the front. 

While listening to the latest Hanselminutes today, I was startled a bit by a relevation by Martin Fowler that Thoughtworks, his company is seeing a steep decline in .NET related projects requested by their clients. The podcast is here, with a discussion on it on Scott Hanselman's blog here.

I posed the question to Scott on his blog, wondering his take on it:

What's your take on Martin Fowler and .NET declining in thoughtworks projects? Is this an indication .NET is going to decline overall? I have a real hard time seeing it.

Scott replied with:

That one surprised me. Since they are only 800 people, it's just a very small statistic, so I don't know how valid it is. It might mean they are doing fewer large enterprise jobs. It's VERY hard to hire a good .NET person right now, which could mean they are all working, or there's fewer of them. Either way, it's something worth digging into.

Then, Martin Fowler replied with:

I don't know what to make of it either. I don't think we're a statistically valid sample, but it's a data point nonetheless. It surprised me too when I heard.

TW seems to be a very progressive company that hires TOP talent. Martin Fowler is evidence of that, as well as some other TW employee blogs I've seen. By nature, they propbably get clients seeking the latest technology. .NET isn't that new anymore. Even with the new pieces of technology coming out under the .NET umbrella, the technology has had a while to bake now. However, that doesn't correspond with Martin's comment in the podcast about Java holding steady, while .NET has seen a decline. Martin and Thoughtworks has thrown a lot of support behind Ruby and Ruby on Rails in the last year. Check out RubyWorks, being launched by TW in July 2007. Is TW steering customers away from .NET by offering such programs or is it just a response to customer demand. Seems like a little of both to me. Rubyworks is probably the response, Martin Fowler attending RailsConf 2 years in a row and writing about Ruby is probably doing the steering.

This topic also gets to the heart of some other discussions about whether Microsoft's power and influcence is waning despite a smattering of new technology releases (VS Oracas, Silverlight).

• Scott Hanselman asks whether Microsoft is losing the Alpha Geeks.
• Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror comments about people Giving up on Microsoft for other technologies.
• Paul Graham decries that Microsoft is Dead.

I have a hard time seeing Msft declining significantly because so much of corporate america is already bought into their technology and doesn't want to change just because Alpha Geeks don't find it interesting anymore. Corporate managers are the ones who decide when a technology dies and I don't think too many of them are feeling like Msft has lost its influence at the moment.

I don't think Msft is losing its influence rather than its competitors have become more emboldened. Msft's cage has rattled by Google, that much is clear. Msft is losing the battle in the search market, that is also clear. But Msft is a long way from losing the battle in the developer market.

I don't get a lot of traffic at this blog yet, but if anyone happens to read this, I'd like to hear your thoughts.