>The thing about it is, no matter how much I read the threads, I'm never convinced one way or another. I either hear very high level rhetoric, or very detailed discussions, which I'm incapable of really understanding. Jos makes a good point about comparing apples with apples. First time I've seen anyone actually bring up that point. I think it really doesn't matter what language you use, as long as you are comfortable with it and it can support you, if that's what you want.
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Hi Jay. The way I see it is that most of us are in one of three camps; (1) self employed, (2) contract developer, (3) employee.

If you are in cat 1 then you can use whatever tools you want with which to produce your product. You can choose whether to use products that will appeal to certain target end-users or not, and target your market appropriately. In many markets the end-user is not concerned with the tools used. Small business, for instance, is probably much more concerned with cost, functionality, and performance.

In cat 2 you are selling your coding skills.The buyer of your services will often dictate the tools to be used and for larger clients this will invariably be whatever MS is pushing.

In cat 3 you basically do as your told. You will need to make sure you have whatever skills your employer requires you to have. It will have nothing to do with what is better or worse. Only with whatever your employer wants.

Here’s the rub; all developers will fall somewhere along the bell curve. Those at the left of the curve are doomed no matter what they do, or what tools they use, and hence require no further discussion. Those on the right of the curve are so good that they will always be able to sell their skills and will not have a problem learning new tools as various projects may require. Then we come to the bulk of coders in the middle, which will also fall into cat 3 as it so happens.

This group, in cat 3, I fear are the ones that will to a large extent simply be outsourced sooner or later. Average coders producing average code can be done by average coders anywhere – and cheaper. This group of coders will either educate themselves further along the bell curve (tough) or be replaced by cheaper and possibly better coders elsewhere. For this group what language to learn and use is almost academic. Even if they learn .Net (or whatever) really well their counterparts in “outsource heaven” are also learning it. So what is the differentiating factor?

The arguments against outsourcing that I have heard so far are language barriers or cultural differences or similar issues. But these can all be overcome and indeed are being overcome as we speak. The outsource countries like India, China, etc, are not innately less smart than the west. There is nothing that they cannot learn to do as well as average western coders. But they can do it much cheaper. I believe that coding for a living will become more and more difficult to do unless you are on the right third, or quarter, of the bell curve, or you have unique skills and knowledge and/or you are in cat 1. And unfortunately most of us are in the middle 50%.

I think one should perhaps think more about what role we play in the IT world rather than just what language we will use. What role can one learn that is harder to outsource? Project management or consultant, IT Security, system design, special niche markets, etc. Learning a language is not enough – its outsource-able. To remain competitive in the IT world coders will need to expand their skill set beyond just what language to use.

Apologies to all for the long post - its Friday here and I already hit the wine :)