There are a few different platforms out there, the predominant being Microsoft, Java, and LAMP. Sure there are others, but the 90% market share for client/server development is, arguable, those three. Having worked in all three, repeatedly, for corporate enterprise project teams, I find some recurring behaviors in the culture and behaviors exhibited.
Microsoft's early history was departmental applications, whereas Java started as Enterprise-class projects. The Departmental apps were usually less funded, and as a result attracted programmers with lower pay expectations and correspondingly lower programming skillset. Back in the 90's, this phenomena was accepted as universally true.
This has repurcussions today. I find Microsoft shops to be unorganized, and characteristically they are suffer project overruns and compromise or failure. Java shops on the other hand are usually expensive, but successful.
LAMP projects often fall into a space similar to Microsoft projects, because the community often has had little or no formal education in computer science, and is proud of its hack-approach. However, I think that tide is turning, as the open source movement is attracting the best talent from every sector, and the open source community is based on LAMP. LAMP is exciting, and I am glad to be a aprt of it and escape the horros of working in a Microsoft-oriented shop.
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