Paul Graham’s latest essay “Microsoft is Dead” is a fabulous read. It pretty much sums up why I ditched Visual Studio and .NET and moved to OS X:

… I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.

It’s not about being a fanboy or a snob, it’s about using tools and staying current with technology that’s relevant to how business is being done. Not to mention Windows and SQLServer licensing costs are just not a scalable reality for most web startups.

It’s too bad for .NET, and specifically C#. They did a lot of things right with it. Maybe the Mono project will keep it relevant, but I’m not getting my hopes up.