Do a lot of companies still use ASP.net? I have a chance to learn it if I dont get an internship. I'm wondering if its worth my time to learn to use in the future.
If you start learning ASP.NET, I'd recommend skipping WinForms and start with ASP.NET MVC. The latter is a really good framework for .NET projects. It shares many features with popular frameworks (RoR, Django…) and doesn't get too much in your way. No _postBack() and horrible viewstates.
If you like corporate culture, once you've acquired a moderate level of expertise in .NET, finding a job should not be too difficult — depending of where you live of course.
I agree 1000%. I am currently trying to get my team to rewrite several WebForms apps using ASP.Net MVC. I am almost to the point of not allowing them to use the toolbox to create a single UI element, too. Autocode is crippling and encourages developers to stop thinking about what they're doing (or be afraid of overriding Visual Studio's decisions).
It is definitely useful for a corporate career path, but there is a lot of development work, freelance and otherwise, for those experience in LAMP, open source, java, etc.
I agree about the autocode... I wonder about the repercussions on development in general. It is like sampling in music or those libraries that come with Reason...some use it to make original and compelling work, but that is the edge case, not the norm...
>I'm wondering if its worth my time to learn to use in the future.
Not sure if it's worth learning on your own, but if you get hired to do it, a lot of the skills are applicable elsewhere, if not the knowledge of the libraries.
I'd have no problem hiring someone proficient in .NET for a java job, and vice versa, presuming they were smart and hard working.
If you like corporate culture, once you've acquired a moderate level of expertise in .NET, finding a job should not be too difficult — depending of where you live of course.