Microsoft - Talent Killer???

I recently read an article by Keyvan Nayyeri (http://nayyeri.net/blog/microsoft-ndash-the-talent-killer/) and I mostly agree to this wonderful article.

I have myself faced a scenario where, I have seen people with more than 2-4 years of .NET experience lack in basic understanding of client and server technology. I attribute this "lack" of basic understanding to the drag and drop and kind of a black box approach taken to programming. I dont mind drag-drop feature, its much easier, but the developers need to know what happens when they drag and drop, otherwise it becomes a problem for others too.

I have myself now worked for about 4 years in Microsoft web technologies and I find it really proud to be part of such a nice community. But when I see people using the ease of use (or misuse) provided by .NET blindly, it pains me to think that it has been such a waste. I am pretty sure, MS didnt have in mind these things while they thought of easing the development down.

Having worked in traditional ASP before switching over to ASP.NET development, I understand it is so much easier to code in ASP.NET. Working in ASP, helped me a lot develop deep understanding of client-server technology. I love to code in ASP.NET with the facilities and ease of use provided. But it pains me, when I see people using these technologies without proper understanding of what goes on server side and what goes on client side. Just because using MS-AJAX you can make a server call easily without the page visually doing a post back, is a bad idea.

People tend to forget that MS while providing so many visual aids and so many tools, creates magic of sorts, but it cannot do any magic for the understanding behind the code being written. Thats the responsiblity of the developers.

Applications developed in such a manner by "commerical developers" may be looking ok on the front end, but may have many deep-rooted fundamental problems due to lack of good quality code.

So cheers and thumbs up to Microsoft for bringing in such wonderful technologies, making it easier for us developers, but a thumbs down to developers who use such technologies, without understanding what goes behind the drag drop.