Hi,

I've been programming in .NET for several years now and am thinking maybe its time to do a platform switch. Any suggestions about which platform would be the best to learn? I've been thinking about going back to C++ development or just focusing on T-SQL within the Microsoft stack.

I'm thinking of switching because:

a) I feel that the .NET platform is increasingly becoming commodified--meaning that its more about learning a GUI and certain things to click around than really understanding programming. I'm concerned that this will lend itself to making developers on that stack increasingly paid less.

b) It's very frustrating to spend your entire day essentially debugging something that should work but doesn't. Usually, Microsoft releases something that suggests anyone can just click here and there and poof there's your application. Most of the time it doesn't work and winds up sucking so much more time than it was supposed to save.

c) I recently led a team in a small startup to build a WPF application. We were really hit hard with people complaining about having to download the runtime. Our code was also not portable to any other platform. Added to which, the ram usage and slowness to load of the app was remarkable for its size. I researched it and we could not find a way to optimize it.

d) I'm a little concerned about being wedded to the Windows platform.

What are the pros and cons of adding another platform and which platform do people suggest?

Thanks!