Bad architects make bad software, that is in no way respective of architects as a whole. Unfortunately I have met many “architect” level developers that career records 2-3x longer than mine and yet I wouldn’t even hire them for a mid level position in my shop.

Plus it depends on what the targets are, WCF for instance is a platform for a multitude of communication scenarios. 

Anyone can design lovely apps even in .NET, especially with FubuMVC, or Nancy, or OpenRasta, or ASP.NET MVC. But since usually there are “architects” at work behind them, they have to make it big.

.NET and Java (IMHO) handicap their developers with a steep learning curve (not to mention syntactic baggage) trying to be all things to all people. Look at WCF for example. How many different types of connections can you have? I know Named Pipes is in there someplace (never had to use this and don’t anticipate I ever will). http://visualizationtools.net/default/wcf-service-flavors/

I think Microsoft could do just find as a tool vendor if it only served up languages instead of frameworks. 

Some argue that even the BCL is bloated: http://blog.markrendle.net/2011/06/28/how-i-would-like-microsoft-to-distribute-net-v-next/

Caleb Jenkins reccomended Object Thinking: http://developingux.com/2010/01/17/practice-object-oriented-development/. I never finished the book. It did have a nice little history lesson at the front about things like why Stroustroup poo-pooed SIMULA. In addition to that, it basically says that the language your shop uses is based on philosophical choice.

I wonder if the C# team and the framework team have a philosophical divide. It seems like there is a divide between the MVC folks and other parts of M$.

I’ve identified for several years as Alt.NET (you know that band of weirdos who embrace C# but spurn pretty much everything mainstream .NET although a bunch of us prefer MVC to Monorail these days). NHibernate and Windsor forever baby.

To me it all comes down to “Context is King” and “Right Tool for the Job”.

With the thread per request baggage (on the web side at least), I’m not sure .NET scales much better than a C implementation of Ruby, but I haven’t run any numbers.

I think we are stuck in a situation where Microsoft is a household name, and a bunch of us don’t really like what they are selling that much (but the boss does). The HTML & JS on the desktop thing has been done, but it’ll  be interesting to see what they do with it. I have a hard time believing that most desktop client devs won’t stage a full-scale revolt (you know after spending years perfecting WinForms or WPF-fu).

I think it is worth noting that there was or is some division among the *NIX boys and girls too: http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?id=705

I think part of the problem may be that Microsoft doesn’t really seem to be listening lately. What happened to the heroes that saved the “average user” from the terminal?