[jgeralnik]

(Anecdotal counterpoint) For the vast majority of the students at my university, visual studio is the reach-to solution for any problem. They would much rather figure out how to write ASP.NET because visual studio is "awesome" than go around running node.js (what's that?) from a command line.

[spamizbad]

Anecdotal counterpoint to your counterpoint - I saw the same thing 10 years ago when I was in school (Comp-Sci students gobbling up Visual Studio). It seems the more things change the more they stay the same...

Despite this:

-Qualified .NET developers continue to be difficult to find. Also, they make slightly less money than their Java counter-parts for reasons I don't fully understand.

-The 00's are regarded as Microsoft's "lost decade"

-Microsoft's tools gained little traction among startups... although MS-based ones do exist. The most notable being StackExcahnge however that was created by industry veterans not out-of-college whippersnappers.

Don't count on computer science students to create Microsoft's future. Many will drop the major for something easier.

[skrebbel]

Yeah, but many of those are going to be the lazy and uninfluential engineers anyway. I'm more interested in why people who do look further than the most obvious option would or would not choose .NET.