3 ms·

But why is being parochial in an MS world a bad thing? People are upset not because that point was made but how that point was made. I'm a MS developer and alth

But why is being parochial in an MS world a bad thing? People are upset not because that point was made but how that point was made. I'm a MS developer and although I do know other languages I don't necessarily see it as a big advantage. It's basically a question of breadth vs depth. The truth is that the MS stack is deep enough that a developer can dive in and few will ever hit the bottom of that pool. If I was looking for a job as a .NET dev, my depth in .NET is what is important, not how well I know N number of other languages. If I'm working in a .NET stack, my experience with Java, while not worthless, is not as useful ass more depth in .NET. An individual has a finite amount of resources to spend learning about other stuff. Yes, it would be awesome if I knew tons of other languages or how things work at ever lower levels of code. I just choose to spend those resources learning things that are more immediately useful to me. The author just took a very derogatory approach to this point and I think it's understandable that it upset people.

gruseom 16y ago
But why is being parochial in an MS world a bad thing? It's a bad thing because the MS world has traditionally been cut off from the best ideas and even the best mainstream ideas around software. When I snapped out of my dogmatic slumber as an MS dev I was shocked at how much I had been missing and how much better my work got when informed by the computing world as a whole. Although my knowledge, like most people's, is still partial and fragmented, nevertheless this was a real and very valuable state change. So I can't help but respectfully suggest that if you want to grow as a software person, you should probably seek something equivalent in your own path. It's not a question of breadth vs. depth. It's a question of a pond vs. the ocean.

gruseom 16y ago

But why is being parochial in an MS world a bad thing? It's a bad thing because the MS world has traditionally been cut off from the best ideas and even the best mainstream ideas around software. When I snapped out of my dogmatic slumber as an MS dev I was shocked at how much I had been missing and how much better my work got when informed by the computing world as a whole. Although my knowledge, like most people's, is still partial and fragmented, nevertheless this was a real and very valuable state change. So I can't help but respectfully suggest that if you want to grow as a software person, you should probably seek something equivalent in your own path. It's not a question of breadth vs. depth. It's a question of a pond vs. the ocean.