Snobbery of the .Net Developer
I’ve wanted to get this off my chest for quite a while, and finally I’ve decided to do it. There is something about your average .Net developer that makes them feel they are a cut above the rest.
Microsoft Certification
Ok, so I’m not Microsoft certified, but really who cares? Does it stop me doing my job? No it doesn’t, in fact I’ve worked with a number of developers who are not Microsoft certified and not one of them has been incapable of doing there job. I would probably go as far as saying that the majority of them have been better at their jobs than the Microsoft certified developers I know.
I’ve been to job interviews where I have been asked why I haven’t done the certifications, and I have no real reason other than the fact that I have other more important things in my life to worry about. To be honest the world of web development is moving so fast I’d rather be keeping up to speed on more important matters such as web standards, accessibility, SEO etc etc. If I felt that becoming certified would improve my skills by tenfold then that would be a different matter, but I seriously doubt it would, so for the moment I’ll stay un-certified. Yes it would probably make me more employable to many companies, but I am interested in doing just .Net work all day long, not likely.
Web Standards
Calling all .Net developers, have you heard of this term? Have you heard about Accessibility? So that’s probably a little harsh, but in my experience of recruiting for web developers when I ask them those exact questions I have received some very blank looks. It’s really time these “web developers” (I use the term lightly) woke up to what is happening in their industry. Is it that they just don’t care, or it is that they think learning about HTML and CSS is below them and for “script kiddies” only? In either case the developers need to pull their heads out of the sand. I suspect some of this ignorance is due to many of the .Net developers coming from a VB background and thus have never had to worry about HTML. If that’s the case then maybe they should move back into the area of desktop development work and leave the web world to people in the know and people who care about the industry.
It has become apparent to me that a lot of web developers (not just .Net ones) don’t read up on the latest developments. Either by looking at stuff online of offline. Here’s a hint to those people, start doing it fast, the web isn’t going to wait for you to catch up. More and more companies are looking for people with knowledge about web standards, if you don’t have it, you won’t get the job.
The Target Audience uses IE
Is this really a valid reason for not developing web applications using web standards? I’ve heard this argument given by many people, including during job interviews I’ve been for. I’m dumbfounded ever time I hear it. I’ve also heard the excuse that forms take too long to generate using divs and CSS and to be frank that’s an appalling excuse. It only takes too long when you don’t know how.
So what if your target audience only uses IE, it makes no difference, web applications still need to meet accessibility guidelines. You can’t turn around to a user who needs the application to be accessible and say “tough”. What happens if your most important client suddenly decides they are going to move over to Linux or Mac OS, they still want all those applications to work on the new platform and if your product doesn’t someone’s will and a client will soon jump ship. I can see the panic now if that happened.
An apology
.Net developers on the whole are very good at what they do, and I’m sorry to have picked on you so much. However if you are going to work in the web industry then you need to find out more about it. The web isn’t a Microsoft platform, stop treating it like that. Ruby and PHP developers manage it, isn’t it about time you did?
I have recently read the article The true ASP.Net developer, it’s well worth a read.
You brute JP, more than a few .NET developers will be crying themselves to sleep tonight, that’s for sure.
I’m interested how you view Microsoft’s role in all this. Obviously their lack of real (as opposed to simply verbal) support for web standards is well documented, and painfully evident in their products, a situation that gives less conscientous developers the perfect excuse not to do anything about it.
However, I wonder if the behaviour of products such as .NET and Internet Explorer (6) points to a more general internal MS culture, that is - by and large - simply not concerned with the promotion and use of web standards, and naturally extends to .NET developers through training, conferences, blogs, and so forth.
You mentioned PHP and Ruby, which are both open source products, and as such probably have a more diverse set of people contributing both to the product itself, and the community as a whole.
Perhaps this increased diversity results in PHP and Ruby developers having a greater awareness of issues outside of their own little clique, something that the .Netters are lacking.
Thoughts?
Comment by Stephen — May 2, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
Simply put, “A bad workman blames his tools”.
Ok, you could argue that .Net doesn’t produce valid code out of the box, however in .Net 2.0 that has changed. Also the beauty of .Net is that you can write your own components that do validate. I have used .Net for a few years now and I’ve personally managed to work with it’s shortcomings and produced sites that validate to the W3C XHTML 1.1 specification. Yes that means I’ve had to put a little extra work in initially, but now I’ve got a series of validating components I just plug them into all the sites we produce at the White Agency.
Yes, Microsoft have been very slow on the uptake of standards, however, hopefully they are looking to change this with taking on Molly Holzschlag. This might be a long road, but at least it’s a step in the right direction and clearly after years of moaning to Microsoft about web standards they are finally starting to listen.
Going back to .Net 2.0, this can now produce XHTML 1.0 valid markup, but you can bet your bottom dollar that isn’t going to stop “web developers” using tables for layout.
I think your last sentence is the most poignant. For some reason .Netters lack the ability to look outside their own little bubble and for the life of me I cannot understand this. Any ideas as to why they don’t look further than the MSDN libraries?
Comment by John — May 3, 2007 @ 8:30 am
Well, my original point was less about the flaws in Microsoft’s products, and more about the culture that originally produced those flaws and (in the case of IE) refused to acknowledge or fix them for many years.
I think the reason developers don’t look further than the MSDN libraries is because they don’t have to. They’re using a product produced by a single company, a company that is very adept at keeping everybody within the insular world they’ve created (not Microsoft bashing, most big companies do this). So, if you’re using MS products, you get MS certified, you read MS manuals (or possibly manuals written by third parties who also happen to be MS certified), and so on and so forth.
You actually have to make a concerted effort to read anything that hasn’t got Microsoft’s fingerprints all over it, which means that what MS consider to be important is what most developers using MS products consider to be important.
If Molly made some dramatic inroads at Microsoft, and the company suddenly started producing standards-adoring software – and the documentation and training to match – you can bet your arse that a lot of these standards-ignorant developers would sit up and take notice (particularly if their “Certified Professional” status depended on it).
Stephen
Comment by Stephen — May 3, 2007 @ 9:52 am
I totally agree on the certification issue. I have never met a really good MS certified developer, unless he knew how to code before he got certified. Many people get certified and then think they are a developer and a good one too. Getting certified is nothing more that an introduction to .NET and that’s it.
Comment by Mads Kristensen — May 11, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
Can’t argue with that, but why is that these developers then stop there? Why don’t they understand that they need to keep learning more especially on the web side of things where technologies etc change at an alarming rate?
Comment by John — May 16, 2007 @ 11:11 pm
Although the White Agency website homepage is not valid XHTML, what’s all that about?!
Also, I’ve found quite a few validation issues still remnant in .NET 2.0, I know you can overwrite the render but its still annoying - why should I have to?! Also does Microsoft realise that HTML tags are semantic - there’s more than 4 tags you know?!
Comment by Paul Wood — December 7, 2007 @ 10:37 am
Yeah, see what you mean about the White Agency homepage. That’s what happens when you leave the site front end coding to less experienced people ;-). I’ll get that changed when I’m in the office tomorrow.
Out of the box the .Net 2.0 does have problems, but we are used to overwriting the rendering side of things for .Net 1.1 so it’s really come as a major problem for us. I am currently looking at something completely different though that means you can code in .Net (C# for me) and not use the stupid web forms stuff, including that very annoying ViewState hidden variable. I’d recommend you have a good read about the Castle Project stuff, especially the Monorail and ActiveRecord projects, these really rock (in a very geeky sense). I am currently doing a lot of research into it and thinking about getting my team at the Agency to start using it. It is a MVC framework and is basically like a .Net version of Ruby on Rails. I’m going to be blogging on this stuff soon, but I just want to spend some more time with it first.
Comment by John — December 9, 2007 @ 2:27 pm