I come from a LAMP background (learning Ruby now). What I have seen - in my experience (25 year old, military making the transition to a NSA contractor) is: LA

I come from a LAMP background (learning Ruby now). What I have seen - in my experience (25 year old, military making the transition to a NSA contractor) is: LAMP and open-source is where it's at for the true innovators on the web. Your startups and companies that go out and try new things, will use some form of open source stack. A Microsoft Stack is prevalent when working within "the establishment," for the man, or in Enterprise level development. These are commonly workcenters in which they rely on the support and testing made available by Microsoft - it is a key factor in their decision to follow that stack. It's not always set in stone that way - my new job is a complete Microsft Stack (IIS, MS SQL) with the exception of the language (PHP). Every now and then, even the man, gets a little spunky and tries something new.