[xradionut]

Bullshit. Microsoft crapped on it's developers, IT and users when it released Windows 8. How are you supposed to develop for a system when the frameworks change every couple of years? Not to mention pissing off independents, dropping TechNet and raising license costs across the board. Price out a decent MS server solution and 60 to 80 percent of the cost is Microsoft licenses. Azure isn't a solution either since Redmond is Yet Another NSA Bitch.

[microtonal]

You are quite a drama queen :). Windows 8 applications can still be programmed in .NET languages. Given that probably 80% of the application is not 'front-end' code, it can be compiled without changes. On the front-end you can still use whatever was used before, since the desktop still exists. And if you want to go all-'Metro': there is a learning curve, but it is not that steep, since Windows 8 applications are also developed using XAML et al.

Disclaimer: as a OS X and Linux user, I don't know much about Windows.

[xradionut]

Disclaimer: As a developer and admin primarily on Windows for the last 18 years, I know more than I want to know about Windows. BTDT, got the t-shirts...

[flomo]

I don't know if Microsoft crapped on it's developers as much as they lost touch with them.

The other day HN had an item where a MS guy was talking about "dark matter developers" -- devs who are plugging along writing WinForm/WebForm apps like it's 2003. That's Microsoft's constituency and they simply don't care about WPF/WinPhone/Metro/etc.

[networked]

The article in question appears to be http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen9....

[bornhuetter]

I have not been a Windows developer for many years, so I admit I may be wrong about things from that perspective. As a Windows user, I still think that their products are pretty good at what they do and that a large proportion of the media and its customer base hate everything Microsoft does by default.