Joe Johaneman

For me, the answer is, very little. I'm a web developer, and in the web world, open source is where it's at. Microsoft doesn't ship with Open Source tools at all. My Mac came with Python, Ruby, Tcl, and GCC.

I don't care too much about desktop either, other than apps I write for myself, and most of them are command line apps just because I'd rather not be bothered learning a widget library. I can use Tkinter in Python if I have to, but I generally don't need to.

As to Windows Mobile, my only contact with it was a guy who paid me to sync his phone for him (yeah, he couldn't figure out how to sync the phone.) To be fair, he was trying to sync it with Act, which isn't exactly intuitive. Other than that, I've never used a WinMo phone, but I've heard horror stories from developers.

This has always been the problem with proprietary systems. Companies are so worried about the possible lose of R&D on their IP that they totally leave developers out in the cold. Apple can be as guilty as Microsoft on that one, but they've been somewhat okay with the iPhone SDK. I wish they were a little more transparent about why they reject some apps and let others in, but que sera. I don't write iPhone apps anyhow.

Please MS. Do something to keep me. Support a REAL open strategy and ship with open source tools. Before it's too late. Oh wait, it already is.