Gone are the days when developers used to be sidelined as competition used to be minuscule and generally a single company ruled the roost but all this has totally changed in the current scenario. This has been made possible due to new qualifications for developers and advent of rich internet applications.

Jonathan Schwartz expressed his passion for developers at the JavaOne conference but it was certainly not as loud as the one echoed by Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft MIX08 conference where he couldn't resist uttering his love for web developers.

It's not just Sun and Microsoft but a host of other companies which are trying to woo developers. Companies have been working on developer platform choice and everybody is making efforts to reach as much developers and consumers as they can. After all the success of any company's product is dependant on the developers associated with it.