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Good analysis. They really killed the golden goose, never understood it. But internal rivalry makes sense, the same thing that bankrupted Nokia. I know a lot of developers that were really happy in that older Microsoft ecosystem, it was a semi permeable walled garden where you could walk 'the Microsoft way' and everything was kind of laid out before you, neat and cosy. At the dev conferences when javascript started to become unavoidable, there was still a period where they kind of pretended Microsoft invented the web and gave it a nice but small spot alongside all the other, more important technology with which Real Developers make Real Software. You could have discussions on architecture, but nothing fundamental really, and you'd always follow the prescribed pathways that Microsoft thought out for you. These changed every couple of years, which gave everybody new goals, new certifications to reach, new rewrites to accomplish and get paid for. Anyone that was moderately skilled was quite productive, and it was very easy to get into. When the web got more complicated than html + jquery in server side generated templates, these developers often had a very bad time and fully retreated into their 'backend' role. The most recent anti javascript stronghold is Blazor, not sure if that is still a viable way to avoid modern frontend tooling. I never really understood why Microsoft abandoned desktop gui apps like they did and left their walled garden unattended. It was one of their strong points, even though I disliked it a lot. |