Despite the gloomy global outlook, many Microsoft software development professionals appear to be bucking the "back to the future" trend. The single-biggest survey takeaway is that 59 percent of respondents reported higher salaries in the last 12 months. It's a little bit more conservative and the compensation that we're seeing has been about average for the last three or four years. "Microsoft software development gives us a strong future in the sense that there is some security in it," says Rafique S. , who has worked as a software engineer and application developer for almost a decade at a manufacturing company... "There is always going to be a demand for that type of skill and that type of work -- it's a good skill set to have," he says. More than one-third (38 percent) of survey...

In those days we programmed in binary and stood back while computer operators went into another building with our punched cards, to access the computer in a sterile environment. J. Many years passed then I started my own business, bought a TRS80, and programmed all my business needs using BASIC. Not that it's going to change anything, but here's Donald:. --------------. I graduated from the first computer programmer's school taught by the US Army, at Ft. , in 1958. Monmouth, N. Reader Donald Fogelsanger took the trouble to write a heartfelt message, mainly about Microsoft.