ASP dead?

couldn't agree with you more. however, if by "long-term" you mean the next couple of years - i would have to disagree on that. Realistally, in the technology market, change is the only constant, so "long-term" support really can't be expected of anything tech related. IMHO legacy ASP will still be around for several more years, at least in the consumer market. Small sites that were built in ASP that want to expand their site's functionality may be faced with a decision: an expensive complete and NOT NECESSARILY better site overhaul (and, for that matter, time consuming, as well as a dip in SERP's as the file names will change) or, as an alternative, hire a "legacy" ASP 3.0 programmer to augment and enhance their existing site. For, lets say.... a big corporation I. E. IBM or Intel, etc... expensive overhauls may in fact be the better alternative, as the new functionality enabled by the more current tech may be worth it - and the bandwidth/server resource usage may be beneficial if they receive loads of traffic... whereas ma and pa who own an ASP 3.0 driven shoe store are probably going to pay $1000 to augment their existing ASP site, as opposed to rolling the dice on a complete overhaul (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) and spending easily 3-4 times as much.

I think of it as kinda like cars - you see alot of new or late model cars driving around that really require very specialized computer-oriented mechanics to work on, but there'll always be work for the handy, friendly, and affordable shade-tree mechanic who knows their stuff.

My opinion: If you're learning from scratch, learn the new stuff. If you're a seasoned programmer like me, still learn the new stuff - as i said, change is the only constant. one should always broaden their abilities - and be the life-long student. But there's going to be a niche market for ASP 3.0 for a long time to come still, and niche markets can be lucritive.

my .02!

VG

 

I meant the next, say, 15 years. Although a couple of years is pretty long-term in this industry.

I think your analysis here is dead-on. The COBOL example I gave was sort of thinking along the same lines. Lots of COBOL programmers made a lot of money about 6 years ago because a lot of big corporations couldn't justify the cost of moving to a modern language.

But some languages do have hard-core, really long-term supporters. C and lisp spring to mind. Those will, most likely, always be worth learning. (Although I see less and less job opportunities with them. I think they're worth learning simply because of the things the teach you about programming).