I will not go on to discuss this article. But I want to express a point of view that I have. I am starting to learn programming and for a lot of reasons, I think I rather learn an Open Source technology than a Microsoft one. Microsoft technologies are meant to work together and this will inevitably lead to you getting locked in, in a Microsoft environment. With Open Source technologies you always have options since they are platform agnostic even though they work better in UNIX-like environments. You can run any of the popular programming languages (Lua, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc) that are used in UNIX-like systems on Windows, and the server software used in UNIX-like systems is also available in Windows, but Microsoft technologies are Windows only. Other important difference is that Open Source technologies can be extended by their users, you don't have to beg anyone to extend the features of an Open Source technology.
At this moment my only computing device is an Android smartphone, you can't do much with it right, right. Ha, but guess what you can install Lua, Perl, Python & JRuby. With JRuby you can even access the full Android API. So I am learning Ruby from and with my Android smartphone. I bet I can't do this with Microsoft technologies.
I will not go on to discuss this article. But I want to express a point of view that I have. I am starting to learn programming and for a lot of reasons, I think I rather learn an Open Source technology than a Microsoft one. Microsoft technologies are meant to work together and this will inevitably lead to you getting locked in, in a Microsoft environment. With Open Source technologies you always have options since they are platform agnostic even though they work better in UNIX-like environments. You can run any of the popular programming languages (Lua, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc) that are used in UNIX-like systems on Windows, and the server software used in UNIX-like systems is also available in Windows, but Microsoft technologies are Windows only. Other important difference is that Open Source technologies can be extended by their users, you don't have to beg anyone to extend the features of an Open Source technology.
At this moment my only computing device is an Android smartphone, you can't do much with it right, right. Ha, but guess what you can install Lua, Perl, Python & JRuby. With JRuby you can even access the full Android API. So I am learning Ruby from and with my Android smartphone. I bet I can't do this with Microsoft technologies.
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/