You are blowing smoke with this comment. The exact opposite is happening and in a big way.

Look, I am a FreeBSD guy, but Microsoft is winning whether you think so or not. .NET is rapidly growing in the enterprise!

Why?
1. Because it is a well thought-out language that is easy to write, easy to learn.
2. Because the IDE is second to none. Visual Studio is so far ahead of anything else out there one wonders if any other IDE can catch up ever. It takes dozens of searching and finding plugins to even get Eclipse close to the same functionality and you just can't get there. Eclipse still hasn't reached VS 2008 quality let alone VS 2013 quality.
3. Everyone always says "If only we could rewrite it, it would be better." Well, .NET is basically a rewrite of Java (thanks to the Sun lawsuit). .Net is fully-backed by Microsoft who invests a ton of money into it, as apposed to Java which doesn't have as much investment. Microsoft fixed a ton of the java issues with the rewrite and haven't looked back. Java has been behind for years.
4. Microsoft has been putting out open source for years. WiX, Orchard, Entity Framework, etc...
5. The new generation doesn't hate Microsoft or Apple or anyone (OK some Linux zealots might, but not many), they just love technology and when it comes to development, .NET as a complete package including language, IDE, build tools, etc, is the best out there.
6. NuGet

So there are some misconceptions about .NET vs C#. Sites like tiobe shows a list of popular languages. However, what it doesn't show is that multiple of these languages are .NET languages. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php...

C# 4.3%
VB 1.8%
F# 0.8%
C++ - You can code in .NET with C++. It is hard to know what percent of the C++ tiobe is .NET. I would guess that it is 2%.

That means .NET is really 9% and growing.

Now, because the Surface Pro 3 is the best tablet on the market now, and selling like gangbusters, pretty soon, all those Apple and Google app developers will be moving to create new .NET versions. Well, they will find cross platform tools like Xamarin to meet their needs and suddenly they won't be coding in anything but .NET anymore.

Have you seen the new Yahoo plugin for Chrome. I hate the thing myself but it is ingenious. It turns Chrome into essentially a Yahoo browser. Just by getting a bunch of users who don't know better to install it, they are going to increase their usage of Yahoo.

I am an English Major and a Senior Software Developer.

The best thing I ever did for my career was get a degree in English instead of Computer Science. Some Computer Science course can be learned in their entirety from reading online for a few hours. College is below average at best when it comes to teaching about writing quality code.

If you are an English major, then you understand language syntax and importance. All programming is, is language syntax. I took a couple programming course at a Junior College. I have infinite opportunities to use my English degree.

Now, after learning on my own, I earned (well, I still have a thesis to offically finish) a Masters of Computer Science from Utah State University (The online classes are designed so you remotely participate in the real class they teach on-campus). If your undergrad is not computer science, then there is really only one prereq class you must pass. And USU is pretty cheap, $10-$12 for my in-state Masters of Science in Computer Sciences.

Find a place that will hire you as a coder, and then

This is huge and will take off because there are big companies that would save a lot of money by using it. For example, WordPress.com, which hosts billions of images, does pay for their bandwidth. They have a simple plugin that compresses all uploaded images. All they have to do is change their plugin to use BPG and suddenly the billions of blogs out there using smaller images? That is the majority of their image bandwidth. And it is cut in half.

Sure both storage and bandwidth seem bloated. But on a large scale, such as WordPress.com, this could mean hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in drive space and bandwidth savings each year.

Now, DeviantArt and other image gallery companies will see the same benefit.

Then this moves to WordPress.org and the other half the bloggers on the internet start using it too.

Now that WordPress uses that image type, every consumer who right-clicks and downloads those images now needs to be able to open BPG files.

When there is money to be made or saved, a technology will take off.

Any cert "IS" worth going for. Sorry for the typo.

Are any Certifications Worth Going For? Yes. Any cert if worth going for.

Why? Because HR and Hiring Managers are filtering

If you have 10 resumes, some with 4 years experience, and some with 4 years experience and a cert, and they want to narrow down the candidates, guess what the HR and Hiring managers are going to use? The cert will make the difference.

Also, certs can result in higher pay when the offer comes. Again, this is often just arbitrary bias by HR and the Hiring managers.

If you get certs in areas that you have practical experience, you will probably "really" learn and you won't be a paper cert.
If you get a cert in an area that you don't have practical knowledge, it might be paper, but it might help show you can learn a new product you don't know.

Or It is extremely unlikely that these mechanisms evolved in parallel, so *it's extremely likely that* all lifeforms were created using the same Biological programming language: i.e. DNA.

And there might be other biological programming languages. Would it not be possible for us to detect that instead of DNA, a similar bio-technology would work on a planet with different temperatures and atmosphere.

Our programming language, DNA, works on this planet, but a separate language works on other planets.

Recently the number of earth like palnets was estimated to be 8.8 billion. http://www.nbcnews.com/science...

If different bio-programming languages allow life on other planet types than earth, then the number of possibly inhabited planets becomes nearly infinite.

So you you prove that man can create life in a lab (abiogenesis), what do you think that proves?

Here is all it proves:

Intelligent beings (in this case man) can create life.

Now 100% of your scientific abiogenesis tests required intelligent design (humans). So since in your test, the life didn't begin without intelligent intervention because it required intelligent humans to set up the lab and create the perfect environemnt, did you not just demonstrate that life on earth was also likely created by an intelligent being?

I just got a surface and let me tell you . . .

There will be many, many, many more Surface Pros sold.

It is the only tablet that can be used for "production" as well as "consumption."

Look, there is no justification for this law whatsoever. The governor is pretty clueless here.

This law cannot stand up in a court. This is an unconstitutional ban and it won't last. You cannot prevent a person from buying a product online if that product is legal to buy.

Also, what determines "online from Michigan?" What if I remote desktop to a machine in a different state and open the browser on that system and buy. Did I just break the law? Or since the system that did the ordering was in a remote state, wouldn't it be legal.

Can I buy it and have it shipped to my brother who lives in a different state and pick it up there?

Can I choose it online, and then fax or call in or is faxing and calling considered "On line". What if I get a downloaded PDF that I mail in? That definitely is not an order online.

Tesla should sue, but so should the state where Tesla has its headquarters.

Apple lost the PC market in the late 80s and early 90s to Microsoft because Microsoft focused on business features. Apple did not.

It seems no one at Apple understand business feature needs. For consumers, Apple is user friendly, but for business users, Apple is blind. For business, Microsoft is user friendly, for consumer, they are not blind but average. Apple wins hands down with many consumers but Microsoft wins business and wins the average when both business and consumers are combined.

There are about 1 billion laptops out there, 1/2 a billion for businesses. Most the business laptops will be upgrade in the next four years with a Surface Pro or similar device that is half-tablet half laptop. But unlike other products, this device will be completely business user friendly.

One a company buys their employee a Surface Pro and they use it for business and all their stuff is on it, what is going to happen to that iPad they used to use?

It might have other uses, but it sounds like software for use by responsible parents monitoring their 11 year old that they just gave a phone too.

The parents not only have the right, but some might say the duty, to monitor such underage phone users at all those levels.

"Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."

If you code at a 1st year level for 10,000 hours, and don't study learn and improve, will you still be a 1st year level coder after 10,000 hours?
If you write fiction at a 3rd grade writing skill level, and don't study, learn, and improve, will you always be at a 3rd grade writing level after 10,000 hours?

I would say no to both. You would be much better for two reasons.
1. You will gain ideas naturally - things you may have learned in 5 minutes of studying might pop into your mind.
2. Your brain actually changes with experience. That which you do becomes easier because your brain changes. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-changes-in-response-to-experi/)

College is fine, but we are missing some key educational experiences by going away from apprenticeships. I feel that Computer Science, some forms of doctors, and many other fields would benefit from apprenticeship.

Reason 1 - Treating theories as 100% verified facts/laws

Remember, a theory is not 100% verified. A hypothesis with evidence but not 100% proven is a theory. Once it is 100% proven, it is a Law.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/...

- Gravity is a Law. It is 100% proven. Hence we call it the "Law of Gravity". Even defying gravity doesn't disprove gravity.
- Evolution is a theory, hence we call it the "Theory of Evolution." Not 100% proven but very good evidence to support it. However, there are gaps in the evidence.
- The big bang is a theory, hence we call it the "Big Bang theory."

Science is about observation. We observe what we can and try to determine why something happens or happened or how it happened.

We don't have to understand laws fully. While Gravity is a law, we can't yet explain how it works.

REASON #2 - To the lay person, science is just another religion.

In a religion, a very wise and righteous person sees something amazing (vision, God, taken up to heaven, whatever) that the average person could see if only they would be righteous enough. They call them a prophet. The prophet "preach" to the masses to get them to believe. The average person has to "trust" the prophet. The average person never gets the amazing experience but is asked to think about it and believe. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Teachings are misconstrued by religious zealots.

There are a few very wise people who have seen something amazing that the average person could see if only they would be rich or educated enough. They call them scientists. Scientists "preach" to the masses to get them to believe. The average person just has to "trust" the scientists. The average person could never go to CERN and witness all that is happening there, but they are asked to think about it and believe. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Certain believers become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Teachings are misconstrued by scientific zealots.

REASON #3 - Using theories to disprove something they don't disprove (Usually by misconstrued scientific zealots)

I firmly believe in the the theory of evolution. We have evidence of changes in species over time. We still do not have proof that evolution was the result of an outside influence. We do, however, have evidence of evolutionary jumps--jumps meaning evolution that occurred faster than scientists suspect would be possible, hence there is the possibility that some outside influence gave evolution a bump. Contrary to popular belief (by scientific zealots), evolution and intelligent design and not contradicting theories. DNA looks like biological code and the way it is used in different species looks a lot like good code reuse or self-learning biological code.
The point is, claiming that the theory of evolution disproves intelligent design, or God, or some higher power, is not scientific. There is little correlation between the two ideas. Scientifically, God and evolution could both exist. God (or ancient aliens or a powerful race from a different dimension, or some entity outside of space and time, whatever) could have created the world/universe, whatever, and uses these scientific laws to do so.

Science observes and makes hypothesis, tests them, forms theories, and hopefully discovers scientific laws. It doesn't make brash statements that evidence for one theory disproves a completely unrelated theory.

REASON #4 - Science ignores the unexplained or calls the observer a liar.

Here is one example, but there are many more . . .

A person has a spiritual experience. Their mother returned to them as a spirit and gave them a bit of wisdom. Science scoffs at this experience and calls it untrue. Why? How could such a thing happen? How does a spirit of the dead visit the living? It is not explainable by science, hence it must have be a lie. However, science is about observation. The only scientific evidence that exists--the only observation that exists--is by the person who had this spiritual experience.

Hence by proof of observation, there is an extreme amount of evidence that people see spirits. Now, multiply this by the millions of people that have this experience and the scientific evidence--human observation--of people seeing spirits overwhelms the evidence of other theories, such as the theory of evolution. But such evidence is ignored. Surely these millions of individuals were all just lying and making up anecdotal experiences for one reason or another. Liars.

If a person has such an experience, and science says they are liar, how do you think they are going to feel toward science?

Then when a scientist does take such an experience seriously, the rest of science calls them quacks.

REASON #5 - Using very small amounts of data

Statistically, we probably don't have and will never have enough data to prove global warming is causes by humans. Science is doing its best. It is looking at ice core samples, and guessing the weather in the past. We are tracking data now. We don't have data except for a small portion of earth's history. We have barely 100 years worth of data. Scientists estimate the earth is 4.5 billion years old. 100 years is such a small percentage of the earth's existance. 2.2e-8 by calculator. That will never be a large enough of a sample size. And while ice cores lead to guesses about past weather, they still don't increase our sample size enough.

Become a programmer through self-study/training course and get an entry-level job with a company with tuition reimbursement. Then take night classes. Get practical experience as you get theory. Get paid. Get school reimbursed. It will take six or years instead of four, but you will have 6 years experience and have a "staff" title, working on your "senior" title when you graduate.