From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Sat Jan 20 2001 - 20:15:35 MST
Gerhard wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
>
> > Forget ASP, Java will be more employable, both now and *especially* in
the
> > future. I don't know of anyone migrating from Java to ASP, but I know
of
> > several going the other way. That and most new development seems to be
> > done in Java for the most part.
> >
> > SQL Server was never a big player. Learn Oracle and you'll be employed
> > forever. Oracle Server is one of those few ubiquitous enterprise
products
> > that I actually feel comfortable predicting most businesses will
> > still be using in 5 years.
> >
> > IIS? Well, I've seen the Netcraft results, and every shop I know that
is
> > currently using it is either in the middle of a migration or planning
one
> > to Apache. Hell, I know of shops that use Apache on Windows NT for
> > production systems...
> >
> >
> > If I was going to recommend environment skills for someone looking
> > strictly for marketability I would have to strongly recommend
> > Java/Apache/Oracle. This will allow you to hit the biggest market
segment
> > with most staying power. For better or worse, this is where the market
is
> > at and where it will be going, at least for the next few years.
> > (Thankfully -- I've used ASP/IIS/SQLServer on projects and it makes me
> want
> > to hurl. Oracle and Java have their problems, but they are a good bit
> > better than the MS solution in this case.)
> >
>
> This is perhaps true in the US. Here in New Zealand (and probably in
> Australia too, which is where Emlyn appears to be from, judging from her
> email address)
Quick note: I'm a guy. Emlyn really is a guy's name; really!
Also, yup I'm from Australia, and you are right about the bias toward MS
here. However, I've been a pure teleworker for a while now, I'm working for
a US company based in the US.
> MS has an inordinately large share of the market. I think
> this is partly due to the fact that NZ and AUS companies are much smaller
> than US companies and consequently don't need the scalability offered by
> Oracle, Sun etc. Piracy is perhaps also more prevalent here (though I
have
> no figures on this).
>
> I've typically found strong management resistance to non-MS solutions,
> though this is reducing - after all, what management team can argue with
> freely available open-source office suites, web-servers, and databases!
>
Geez, the purists really did jump down my throat on this whole issue. I'm
beginning to be concerned that I'm crossing into troll territory on the
language/system choice issue.
What can I say? I love GUIs, I don't love command lines. I've been a unix
admin, and a unix developer, and my rather drawn out degree involved all
coding on unix boxes. I've never really grown to like it. Perhaps it's
because my earliest influence in IT was my dad, who hated unix with a
passion (a vms man). There used to be a time when unix was seen as a cobbled
together joke of an operating system, compared to the state of the art.
On the other hand, I've been working with MS stuff for years now. I love it.
I love the win32 world. It's pretty. Some of the variants are even halfway
decent operating systems. The tools are wonderful. The finished products are
beautiful.
Other than my pro MS bias, and a deep affection for Borland's Delphi, I
don't have any particular alliegance to products/languages/etc. Whatever is
necessary to get the job done. It's the thing you are trying to achieve, not
the tools you use to achieve it with.
A final bit of ranting... while lots of people have said that ASP/IIS/ETC is
a bad way to go (and even bad from a saleable job skills sense, weird),
everyone's been putting forward a different point of view. I would put it to
you all that none of us has the big picture. The IT world is truly immense
these days; is it just possible that each of us is dwelling in his/her own
private little (very large) world, and not considering views/truths from
outside that domain?
Emlyn
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