You compared the situations of programmers using COM vs, those using Cobol in the manner that these people who do use this one technology are suddenly going to find themselves out of work. I felt the comparison you portrayed was invalid because it was an "apples-to-oranges" comparison and tried to explain why I thought so.
My final paragraph about Bill Gates and hair and MS going out of business is a stereotype of the kind of thinking that pervades about any technology community that is non-MS (this community being one of them). The original article that started this conversation was kind of alarmist, don't you think? It's a "Chicken Little" episode - look out, the sky is falling when in fact it's not more than a little rain. I guess I get a lot tired of the whole Microsoft vs Everybody else debate (which has its place) and the endless conjectures that because MS did so and so, that means it's over for that group of people over there but this group of people become the ruling class until MS makes another paradigm shift or that MS is on its last leg because BG decided to buy a BMW instead of a Rolls Royce. The Linux users I know (and we have one classic example who works right across from me) are endlessly spouting off this kind of nonsense. I guess I come across as a Microsoft defender, and to some extent I am, having spent a year there recently, but the hysteria about nothing is neverending and I'm so sick of it. Matthew Small Web Developer American City Business Journals 704-973-1045 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: S.Isaac Dealey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 9:58 AM To: CF-Community Subject: RE: Think .Net is in MS's future? think again.. > Assuming for a moment that COM is garbage - I don't > imagine that "people who've built their careers on COM" > are going to be worried about being unable to get other > jobs. If you can program COM, then you should be able > to handle any other type of programming. It's not a matter of being worried about their ability to get other jobs -- that's not the issue at all... People don't want to spend a lot of time learning something horribly challenging, spend years filling their heads with all this information to suddenly be staring into the face of necessary obsolescence. Everyone who programs for a living understands on some level that obsolescence will happen, yes... but having an entire, rather large, and rather complicated, widespread technology suddenly deprecated is still a significant shock. For the most part people expect to see the deprecation of "little bits", not colossal "continents" of technology. It'd be like waking up tomorrow and hearing "international law has now made the production of new software using Java illegal and there will be no appeal". Would Java programmers be worried about being able to find other jobs? Hell no. Would they be pissed? Hell yes. > Comparing COM to Cobol isn't even rational - COM is a > method of providing access to programming constructs > while Cobol is an early language that bears only > passing resemblance to the languages of today. If you paid attention, you'd have noticed that I didn't compare COM to Cobol. I compared the situation of Cobol programmers to the situation of COM programmers -- a very different and very rational comparison. > But this discussion is about why anybody cares what the > underlying structure of Longhorn is. Nope nobody really > cares what the underlying structure is, it's a made up > hysteria that Linux geeks made up to try to make > Microsoft look bad. It nothing more than saying > "Bill Gates has bad hair, so Microsoft is going > out of business". Okay, now you're just being rediculous... You're obviously not interested in having a real conversation about it, so I'll stop now. s. isaac dealey 954.522.6080 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.fusiontap.com http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Purchase Captivate from House of Fusion, a Macromedia Authorized Affiliate and support the CF community. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=52 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:159330 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
