[geuis]

If you are looking to only program for windows, C#. Stay away from java at all cost. Java is a career trap, and more importantly a destroyer of intellect. My roommate is a C# programmer and a system architect. Really smart and he makes close to $150k per year. Java would qualify you to flip French fries in comparison. Also, keep Objective C in mind. That opens up Mac and iPhone development to you. Macs are at 20% marketshare now, iPhones the best selling smart phone. Plus programming for Mac/iPhone is just fun. Further afield, look at languages like Erlang. The future of computing is hundreds and thousands of parallel cores and parallel languages like Erlang are in many ways increasingly important.

[vlad]

I think the Systems Architect position earns that salary, not just a developer who uses that specific language. I don't think anybody is saying C# developers are paid badly, but that Java is open source in (I think) every way by now, and that means it will survive for a long time.

On the other hand, I'm never putting faith into Microsoft's development tools again, as nice as they are, because in recent history, Microsoft has killed off programming languages and tools at will, even their most popular ones. Microsoft makes developers depend on Microsoft's ability to update and improve their programming tools, in order to make the case they should charge for them, but has killed off popular programs or languages in order to concentrate on new ones, given that they themselves don't have resources to support all of them at once.

[johns]

I assume you're mostly referring to VB6 being EOL'd. Any other examples?

[vlad]

Yes, Visual Basic was maybe the most popular language at the time they killed the product. Imagine picking the platform (VB6) that is supported on any computer that mattered (at the time, Windows), compiles to native code, and is also the most popular language. On top of that, your users don't need to download a 30MB .NET Framework that's in beta over a slow dial-up connection. And then, Microsoft kills it! If I'm going to invest time to create software in a popular language, it's not going to be a closed one again.

Microsoft also recently killed scripting and macro support in the latest version of Mac Office, so I imagine if you're a developer on either the Windows or Mac platform and want to script an Access Database, Excel spreadsheet, or Word Macro, you're screwed. It means you can't functionally use previously-created files any more, or use files from Windows users that use scripting. It's almost like Microsoft is helping users and developers migrate to other tools and platforms.