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.NET Programmers In Demand, Despite MS Moves To Metro 319

mikejuk writes "Are you a newbie programmer looking for a job? It seems your best bet is to opt for .NET. According to technical jobs website Dice.com, companies in the U.S. have posted more than 10,000 positions requesting .NET experience — a 25 percent increase compared to last year's .NET job count. So Microsoft may want us to move on to Metro but the rest of the world seems to want to stay with .NET."
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.NET Programmers In Demand, Despite MS Moves To Metro

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  • Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sourcerror ( 1718066 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:08AM (#37654402)

    Isn't Metro just a different GUI library on top of .Net?

    • This is Slashdot, which seems to invent it's own alternate reality when it comes to Microsoft. The headlines and summary spread misinformation, then those are repeated in the comments ad nauseam by the commenters who only get news from Slashdot.

      • by tech4 ( 2467692 )
        Exactly. Metro is just GUI. In fact, you can use .NET languages to develop for it. Even the article doesn't talk anything about Metro. wtf submitter?
        • .NET languages but not the framework. Also if you want to create a component you need to use C++ which is the only language that can do the job.
      • The problem is not limited to Microsoft stories.

        There are stories on all topics that make no sense. I don't know much about how these stories get selected and edited, but couldn't /. hire editors that know the basics of the technologies so they can weed out stories that are fundamentally wrong or that make no sense?

    • That's one way to look at it..

      The other way is that Microsoft is failing in its goals, and the populace is rebelling against them by going with a quaint older technology rather than Microsoft's newfangled nonsense, and frankly I am inclined to agree.

      (Actually I thought Metro was a GUI design standard.. I don't know much about it but I know it's not a competitor for .NET..)
      • They should have finished pulling things into the new managed classes. They didn't finish. Now it appears they never will. So much for a clean break.

    • Reading the Wikipedia article on Metro, it doesn't even seem to be an actual UI library, but more of a specific UI design philosophy. I think as long as you emphasize text as the primary design element and break the screen into flat blocks, you could be developing in Scheme using Qt for all Microsoft cares.

    • No, it's not. Metro is written in C++. None of Microsoft's products are written in .NET. Neither Windows nor Office use .NET in any way.
    • Isn't Metro just a different GUI library on top of .Net?

      No.

      Metro is not a GUI library. It's not a library at all. It's a term to describe a new kind of apps, specific to Win8, that are fullscreen, run in a very tight sandbox, and have different life cycle that allows the OS to unload them. Basically, tablet-enabled apps for Windows.

      WinRT (Windows Runtime) is the library (and a bit more than that; the term is overloaded [blogspot.com]). It's not just a GUI library, mind you. It also has file I/O, and sockets, and HTTP, and lots of other stuff. It's most similar to .NET or Java

  • by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:08AM (#37654404)

    Of *course* .NET programmers are demand 'despite the move to metro'. Windows 8 isn't going to be release for at least a year, and Windows shops need software built *now*.

    I mean, c'mon... that's not even wrong!

    • The interesting bit is the sudden rise in the demand for .NET. That is more difficult to explain.
      • The economy is coming back--that's why. If .NET jobs plunged 75% two years ago and rose 25% this year, that does not suddenly signal a .NET renaissance. If you knew a 20-something getting into programming--would you steer them into .NET? No fucking way. You'd make them learn Java, PHP and Ruby. Java is on fire right now, for example.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:11AM (#37654426)

    Metro is merely a new style of app interface that can be written using .NET, not a replacement for it.

    • Windows 8 isn't out yet! Right now it is just a developer preview. That means it isn't even in beta yet, it is still effectively alpha, meaning feature incomplete. They just want people to be able to start learning the new development environment that will be coming. It has a long way to go before it is out on the desktop (a year or more). Of course even once it is out, it has a longer way to widespread adoption. It'll be several years before lots of desktops feature Metro.

      So why in the hell would businesse

      • ...doesn't mean everyone will be using it. Windows 7 is only what, 2 or 3 years old? It's just starting to gain steam but most of the world still runs XP. Once the masses see that the start menu is gone and has been replaced by this huge, gawdy menu that takes up THE_ENTIRE_SCREEN, they won't be in any hurry to upgrade. 8 is going to go over like Win ME.

        • Actually the majority, or rather plurality at this point, do use 7 now. It has overtaken XP. It is enough (when combined with Vista which quite a few people do use) that some games are now coming out that require DirectX 10, which is Vista and 7 only.

          But yes, the adoption of Windows 8 will be slow. Even if it is an amazing OS, people will upgrade slowly just because that's how people do things. Some don't like change, others see no reason to spend money if what they have now works. Still others just don't d

  • .NET is pretty much a winner in my opinion. There is a heavy demand for it, and if you know C# you pretty much know Java (and vice versa).

    I don't know the point in trying to move people off something which works already. Also the new metrosexual UI is garbage and I'm hoping most people will give it a miss, and anyway tech companies aren't generally eager to move off a working system.

    • You sound afraid of change..
      • Metro is good, the move towards it is because it's better,
      • C# and Metro don't compete (like Java and Swing don't compete),
      • people said the same thing about .NET ("what's wrong with COM+?" they might have asked),
      • people say the same thing about everything,
      • working systems don't work when no-one wants them because they use obsolete technology.
        • Metro is good, the move towards it is because it's better,

        Like the move to the newer FB interfaces right? Or Unity. Or GNOME 3.

        The move towards it is because whoever is in charge of product development said so.

        C# and Metro don't compete (like Java and Swing don't compete),

        Wasn't it written in another article that Metro would be programmable in HTML 5 ? That looks like competition to me.

      • "Better" in what way exactly?

        The masses are embracing Win 7 because it brought some really cool new features and it's rock-solid-stable. I don't recall reading any bad reviews of it. I don't remember ANYONE saying stuff like "WTF is this garbage? I'm sticking with XP!" People aren't afraid of change when they like the change. Win 8 on the other hand? Very few positive reviews (except from those who tested it on a tablet). It's a TABLET INTERFACE that Microsoft is shoving onto a PC. How the hell is that supp

        • by 0123456 ( 636235 )

          The masses are embracing Win 7 because it brought some really cool new features and it's rock-solid-stable. I don't recall reading any bad reviews of it.

          The masses are embracing Win 7 because it came on their PC and doesn't suck as bad as Vista did. I have Windows 7 on my laptop and while I only boot into it every few weeks to play a game that doesn't run in Wine, I've yet to see a 'really cool new feature' that wasn't in XP.

          I agree with you about Windows 8 though, it seems to be Vista++. Maybe Windows 9 will actually separate the desktop and tablet versions and be worth using again.

          • by SpryGuy ( 206254 )

            You have yet to see any feature that is cool in Win7 that wasn't in XP? Seriously?

            Drag-and-drop re-arranging of taskbar buttons

            Jump-lists with most-recently-used documents and other quick featuers (app doesn't need to be running to use them!)

            Areo snap (snap to left/right, snap-to-full-height) makes window management much easier.

            Tons of new short-cut keys (especially useful are the ones for hadningling projectors and secondary screens: Win-P)

            Improved search and Start-Menu-Search.

            Vastly simplified "Homegroup

        • Um... *raises hand*
          I have Windows 7 on my ThinkPad laptop which I dual-boot with Linux. I've just about gotten fed up with 7 and am very tempted to go back to XP.
          Why? Here's a few reasons:
          1. Takes 5-8 minutes to shut down, thrashing the disk the entire time(And not when updates are happening either).
          2. While playing TF2, "audiodg.exe" will randomly take the entire CPU for 30s, then start working properly again. Doing the various suggestions found on google - updating audio drivers, disabling effects on the

    • Bullshit. The Java world is so huge and is much more than just the language. Java is surrounded by a sea of open-source technologies such as Spring and Hibernate and all the other things you need to know to succeed. Also, if all you have on your resume is C pound, nobody is going to consider you for a Java job.
  • by giuseppemag ( 1100721 ) <giuseppemag&gmail,com> on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:20AM (#37654498)

    Metro is a UI on top of Windows 8.

    WinRT is the new Windows 8 runtime, which will be accessible by C++, C# and any .Net language. The .Net standard libraries will be available for Windows 8 Desktop applications but not for Metro applications, which will be written targeting WinRT.

    So, the summary is wrong because:
    a) Metro is not a development framework
    b) .Net-related skills remain central in Windows 8 even when targeting Metro

    • You mean we can write C# applications using Metro that runs on tablets, but with a leaner C# library? Or if you want to target a tablet, you have to write C++? (I consider the latter less likely. )

      • C# for tablets, yes; C++ for tablets, yes as well. They won't make the same mistake they made with WP7: you want to go native, you can, you don't, you can too :)
    • by westlake ( 615356 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @12:07PM (#37654860)

      WinRT is the new Windows 8 runtime, which will be accessible by C++, C# and any .Net language.

      WinRT demystified [tirania.org] [Miguel de Icaza]

      WinRT is a new set of APIs that have the following properties:

      It implements the new Metro look.
      Has a simple UI programming model for Windows developers (You do not need to learn Win32, what an HDC, WndProc or LPARAM is).
      It exposes the WPF/Silverlight XAML UI model to developers.
      The APIs are all designed to be asynchronous.
      It is a sandboxed API, designed for creating self-contained, AppStore-ready applications. You wont get everything you want to create for example Backup Software or Hard Disk Partitioning software.
      WinRT wraps both the new UI system as well as old Win32 APIs and it happens that this implementation is based on top of COM.

      Some developers are confused as to whether .NET is there or not in the first place, as not all of the .NET APIs are present (File I/O, Sockets), many were moved and others were introduced to integrate with WinRT.

      When you use C# and VB, you are using the full .NET framework. But they have chosen to expose a smaller subset of the API to developers to push the new vision for Windows 8.

      And this new vision includes safety/sandboxed systems and asynchronous programming. This is why you do not get direct file system access or socket access and why synchronous APIs that you were used to consuming are not exposed.

      Now, you notice that I said "exposed" and not "gone".

      What they did was that they only exposed to the compiler a set of APIs when you target the Metro profile.

      You might be thinking that you can use some trick (referencing the GAC library instead of the compiler reference or using reflection to get to private APIs, or P/Invoking into Win32). But all of those uses will be caught by AppStore review application and you wont be able to publish your app through Microsoft's store.

      You can still do whatever ugly hack you please on your system. It just wont be possible to publish that through the AppStore.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @12:32PM (#37655002)

      That's not quite right.

      The .NET standard libraries exist in several profiles -- "Core", "Client", "Full".

      People today write their libraries under the "Core" profile so that they work equally well on any platform -- Silverlight, desktop, phone. Core contains the common standard libraries -- e.g. things like StringBuilder, LINQ, generic collections, and the other day-to-day programming side. "Client Profile" also contains UI stuff, and "Full Profile" also contains server stuff.

      For Metro, you will use APIs from both .NET Core Profile and from WinRT. WinRT will provide things like local storage APIs and UI. Core Profile will provide all the other stuff.

      NB. I'm on the C#/VB language design team at Microsoft.

      • I can't see where I wasn't quite right: WinRT is a new runtime that is fully accessible from both C++ and .Net languages. Where am I wrong?
        • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @03:44PM (#37656190)

          The .NET standard libraries WILL be accessible from Metro applications. You'll write your C#/VB metro applications targeting both WinRT APIs and standard .NET APIs at the same time. I suspect that very nearly all C#/VB metro apps will be using many .NET APIs.

          (you had said that the .NET standard libraries wouldn't be available for Metro apps).

          For example:

          IAsyncInfo ai = MessageBox.ShowAsync("hello world"); // using a WinRT API
          Task t = ai.StartAsTask(); // here we're bridging from WinRT to .NET
          await Task.WhenAll(t, Task.Delay(100)); // here we're using standard .NET APIs

          (disclaimer: I work for Microsoft on the VB/C# language team)

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:25AM (#37654528)

    The windows 8 only is a big trun off.

    And the Must be in app store is a other killer as well. No way adobe will give MS 30% the cost of the CS pack just to have a Metro Photoshop.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      oh they will.

      bigger question is who wants metro photoshop when they could have the real tool instead? kindergarten?

  • Whenever I want to throw together a really quick internal tool, and there isn't a really obvious template program I can use, the .Net framework really is great for:
    - drawing up a few texboxes and buttons
    - adding a property.settings var so it'll remember its state between uses
    - adding a bit of codebehind, doing some interactive debugging (change code as its running)
    - then sending it to the user and going through an iteration or two of quick fixes before adding it to our toolset.

    Yes, you can do the same with

  • The only valid statement here is .Net developers in demand. By the way, we're one of the companies contributing to that demand - if you're good with ASP.Net, we'd like to hear from you.

  • Metro was just announced and the demand hasn't caught on, plus .NET is used for a lot more than home-end UI applications.

    This post is akin to me hearing that a new form of candy has been developed and almost immediately asking, "The sale of chocolate is going up. There's a new kind of candy out there that needs much development and people are still eating chocolate... and more of it! What is going on?"

    The article mentions nothing about Metro anyway. WTF?

    *head-desk*

  • Well duh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) <slashdot@ubermAA ... inus threevowels> on Sunday October 09, 2011 @11:37AM (#37654640) Homepage Journal

    Nobody ever got fired for recommending IB^H^HMicrosoft.

  • I found the hacker news discussion of it quite informative: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3071647 [ycombinator.com]

  • They are also still on demand.

  • Companies want people to work on the things they already have vs the things that are a year away? No way! Color me amazed.

    What's the matter Slashdot, not enough Microsoft bashing this week to keep the ad numbers up?
  • by David Gerard ( 12369 ) <slashdot&davidgerard,co,uk> on Sunday October 09, 2011 @12:33PM (#37655008) Homepage

    .NET obsolete? Next you'll be claiming Microsoft has abandoned Silverlight [newstechnica.com]!

  • Even assuming Metro stuff was fundamentally not .NET, we are talking about a technology that isn't going to be in anyone's production environment for over a year or two. People have stuff to get done today.

  • The reason is that Metro has not yet proven itself, and companies are still holding on to the promises of .NET as a stable platform, write once run everywhere, universal look and feel, faster development, and security. That may or may not be the reality, but that's how it was pitched, and that's what the companies believe. They're not going to move their programmers over to a new platform that is unproven in these fields and sacrifice the experience in a platform that they have already invested their code
  • "WANTED: WinRT developer with 10 years of experience!"

    sounds pretty fucking stupid, no? of course they're looking for people with .net experience even if they're going to target that newfangled stuff. besides, it's new stuff, the old pro's should be able to pick it up. and wtf do you think the headhunters writing those proxy job adverts know? fucking nothing on top of a fuck nothing nottinghill notter.

  • May be no one is posting jobs yet because Win8 won't until late next year. There is effectively zero demand.

    Also, Metro is just an API. In the same way you can make a .Net Console or WinForm or WPF or Service, .Net can also target Metro

    • by SpryGuy ( 206254 )

      Actually, "Metro" is a "design language"... a look-and-feel.

      WinRT is the API.

      C# and VB can target the WinRT runtime. "Metro" apps cannot use the full .Net Runtime but only a core of it (plus WinRT). HTML/Javascript and Managed C++ can also target WinRT to create Metro apps. .Net will still be there for making non-Metro apps, as the Desktop is still there for running any sort of windows app you want. And Metro+WinRT simply isn't sutable for ALL apps, so there will continue to be a demand for all the other

  • by pdxChris ( 162827 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @01:47PM (#37655396)

    Slashdot just did a survey, that asked whether readers would recommend Slashdot to others. Here is a perfect example of why I answered No to that question, and would have picked Hell No if that option had been in the survey. An increase in job postings for .Net is newsworthy on a "news for nerds" site. Totally ignorant, misinformed, clueless, stupid, arrogant and worthless editorializing, in the article and the headline, is not at all news for nerds, nor is it stuff that matters. Not only is the commentary about Metro completely wrong, so is the "home for newbies" slant. The linked article clearly indicates that more than 70% of resume searches in .Net are for developers with at least four years of experience. Obviously it's impossible to have four years experience with Metro, but it is entirely possible to have been using .Net for a decade now. The article has no mention at all of Metro. The article also mentioned an utterly ignorant, untrue, trite fear of .Net developers: that their skills do not carry over to other platforms. I guess this means a lot of fearful .Net developer who have never heard of Java? Where does Slashdot get the editors to approve this kind of junk?

  • Okay, if .NET is so awesome--why doesn't Microsoft itself use it? Neither Windows 7 or 8 were written in .NET. Office is not written in .NET. You quote a statistic that Dice includes a lot more .NET positions than last year--but that's because the economy itself is picking up--not because there is any special need for .NET. In fact, the opposite is true. In a word: Silverlight. You know that Metro is the way forward and Metro will not use Silverlight, which is already a second-class citizen in the Microso
  • by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @02:42PM (#37655840)

    Why in your right mind would be using any of these?

    • by Alkonaut ( 604183 ) on Sunday October 09, 2011 @02:59PM (#37655944)
      1) If you write a windows (only) desktop app, I recommend c# over c++ for most scenarios (some high perf. things such as games excluded). The productivity is much higher.

      2) Windows phone apps. You definitely need .NET here.

      3) Streaming video apps for desktop. Html5 can't do it, and Silverlights video streaming beats flash every day of the week. Neither is excellent, and SL has terrible linux support. But still, SL is the least bad one.

    • Because your boss says to.

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