[jiggy2011]

The "nobody under 30 writes MS" statement is obviously false at it's core but perhaps it means something slightly different?

I imagine most of the under-30 devs working on MS software are being hired by established companies to work on enterprise type software or for consultancies building websites using ASP.net etc.

What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from scratch? For example startups, they tend to be using stuff like Ruby/Python/JS etc.

So the question is , what happens when the old guard start to retire? How many will stick with MS because that is what they have used to that point , or will there be interest in switching to newer tools to build newer systems?

[kenjackson]

What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from scratch? For example startups, they tend to be using stuff like Ruby/Python/JS etc.

As someone who was under 30 during Microsoft's heyday (90s) I can say that most developers under 30 then also didn't use MS tools. Borland tools ruled the roost until VC6 and VB6 (around '98). And most young developers out of school back then knew Unix, not Windows.

My point is that it's a myth that there existed some time when all young developers used MS tools. In fact I'd argue that in terms of mindshare MS devtools are near their all-time high in popularity now -- it's that the Windows OS isn't as popular as it once was among the under-30 crowd.

[jmcqk6]

I'm in a startup that uses C# and ruby, ASP.NET MVC, and PostgreSQL.

All software we right has to pass tests on windows and linux (we'll add os x when we get an os x computer). I know we're not conventional, but we feel like these are the best tools.

Anything else is just an argument from popularity and isn't worth our time.