In .NET development, what is the breakdown of WinForms/desktop developers versus ASP.NET developers?

Question

What is the proportion of .NET developers who do WinForms/desktop development vs ASP.NET development? Is there very much overlap? Are they very different skill-sets?

Answer 1

Not sure how accurate it is but Scott Hanselman did an informal survey.

Answer 2

This question is probably going to get closed in the next 10 minutes, so I'll answer quickly. I doubt there is a clean distinction between the two. I know at my own place of employment, most developers work on both.

And the two skill sets are probably not as distinct as you might think. Both ASP.Net apps and WIndows applications could require large amounts of C# code, WCF perhaps and some amount of database work. These skills would be required for either type of development.

Answer 3

This has about 10 seconds before it becomes community wiki or is closed, but I suggest looking at the job listings in your area to get a sense of what the market is looking for. With WPF, you can sort of flip back and forth between Silverlight or Windows apps, and ASP.NET webforms was originally designed with an event model that was supposed to closely mimic Winforms... but the reality is that there are major differences in architecture strategies that generally make fat-client developers unable to develop good web apps and vice-versa. The stateless nature of HTTP, coupled with the HTML/JavaScript/CSS trifecta is just a different beast than the Windows app market. I have a strong suspicion that the employment demand favors web developers over Windows devs as well, unless you're in the gaming industry. But that's not really a market .NET has really thrived in anyway.

Answer 4

My guess-timate is that it's probably a 60/40 split in favor of web development. But I think a more interesting trend is that both the web and windows camps are seeing significant schisms.

Windows definitely is definitely splitting along the WPF and non-WPF lines, since WPF presents such a different UI model. WPF is still a small percentage of Windows developers, but it's definitely gaining some ground. I'd guess that WPF probably only makes up 10-20 percent of Windows development.

Web development may be more interesting as you not only have the Silverlight split going on, but you also have the MVC split happening. Traditional ASP.NET development is still king, but MVC definitely is gaining significant traction and Silverlight is becoming a powerful niche. Maybe a 60-25-15 split among ASP.NET, MVC and Silverlight respectively -- which isn't bad at all for relatively new technologies.

There are definitely overlapping areas of skill across these areas (biz tier and data tier development, along with WCF services), but the UI development paradigm is very different. Having a windows forms developer switch over to an asp.net web form project will require a bit of a learning curve if it's his/her first web form project.

I'm basing my guess-timates on what I see in my regional user group communities and discussions with some leaders in those communities. Definitely not scientific. :)