Is the IT economy picking up?
I see the training sector as a good indicator of development efforts, and by extention the overall IT economy. I just spent a few days at DevConnections, where I was the Visual Studio conference chair. I also did three sessions, acted as EmCee for a couple of events, and manned my franklins.net booth to solicit hands-on training business.
I had more interest in onsite training at this show than at any other trade show we've done. That may be an indicator that more companies are jumping into .NET development, which is good news for the IT economy. The summer was dry business-wise, so I'm thinking that business will really pick up after the PDC, especially after what they're going to show there.
It brings me to another topic, the myth of write-once run-anywhere software. An audience member at the DevConnections Q&A session asked the panel (third-party speakers and Microsoft speakers) whether there will ever be a truly cross-platform system (ala the promise of Java) where .NET applications will run.
If you think about how markets work, you'll deduce this is practically impossible. Virtual Machines that run on all systems will always be slower, less feature-rich, and more difficult to implement. That is true, but it is also true that a company like Borland who makes development tools, will ALWAYS develop FIRST for the dominant platform before developing for a shared platform. That's where the money is. Can you call them greedy? No. You have to call them shrewd. In a market economy, if you do not make the best business decisions, and your competitors do, you fall behind risking death. That means your employees lose their jobs, the company disbands, and the market no longer has the benefit of their products and innovation.
I believe this notion that companies should go against their better business-sense and make decisions that may seem more equitable on the surface is misguided. But, it is human nature, and we should not condemn it. The subject just requires a bit of thought and reason.