When discussing with CIOs and IT directors the idea of adding Windows to the set of platforms for which they develop custom line-of-business apps, one of the most common questions I hear is this: “I've got a team of 50 (or 150, or...) UNIX developers who've been doing that for ten years, or more. How can I get them up to speed on building apps for Windows?“ A serious problem, since developers are not fungible resources; even if you could replace a UNIX-skilled dev with an equivalent Windows-skilled dev, that new person wouldn't have the unique knowledge of the application and the business that is required to effectively build the right apps in the right way.

I've been working on answering that question for the last 8 months. Microsoft courseware has traditionally accomplished two tasks: how do you turn a total neophyte into an effective developer, and how do you introduce the latest and greatest features or subtleties to a person who is already an expert in the previous or current version of our products. We've had nothing that addressed the need to take an expert in the same technology on a different platform and bring them up to speed on the appropriate Microsoft products as rapidly and efficiently as possible. That is another facet of the basic question posed.

The newest part of Microsoft's answer is an on-line computer-based training (CBT) course, Learn the Essentials of Windows for UNIX Developers. It's not heavy-weight; a motivated person could plow through it in far less than a day. But it's crammed full of pointers to content on MSDN, Microsoft.com, and other web sites; lots of references to books, articles, etc. It talks about how developing for Windows is different from developing for UNIX, and why those differences exist. History and philosophy of OS architecture as it applies to the differences between UNIX and Windows.

Everything the typical I'll-learn-it-myself UNIX dev needs to start getting his brain wrapped around modern Windows development.