...Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and Chennai. Indian nationals are even migrating back to the subcontinent to fill positions in the new tech economy. However, India's wider strength in IT services is still there and this will continue.

You talk about providing a consistent programming model in .Net that spans the client, web, servers, devices and services. For some that may sound like Microsoft proprietary vendor lock-in. How do you react to that kind of criticism at the same time as Microsoft is aiming to be taken seriously in open source?

If you go back to 1988 and 1989, when we started working on the first version of the .Net framework, there were two overriding principles that directed the way we developed the platform. Firstly, we wanted to employ XML so that there was a common language for the exchange of data. Secondly, we wanted to provide programmers with a consistent route for creating web services. So, when you say we are only focused on propriety technologies, we really have had interoperability at the core of so much of what we have produced.

There has been a vast proliferation of form factors to develop for, so programmers today have to think about considerations for the application running in a mobile, desktop, web or even cloud-computing environment. Because of this, Microsoft has been focused on creating a consistent programming model to make it easier to develop software productively in a heterogeneous environment.

Now that you've held positions such as corporate vice president of the Windows engineering group, do you ever get time to get your hands dirty with the code and get a feel for ground-level software engineering issues that aren't just fed to you via workgroup studies and surveys?

>I try to take every opportunity to personally install our products in their various forms, whether it be betas, RTM [release to manufacturing] releases or service packs on my own machine.

I do this, in part, to try to understand the acquisition experience that our customers face and so that I can have a chance to play with some of the new features I have seen demonstrated by various teams.

While I have not done any significant coding in a while, I have played around with products, like Expression Blend and Popfly Game Creator, that have allowed me to dabble a little into the lives of those outside of the mainstream developer base, like creative professionals and hobbyist developers.

JavaFX Desktop 1.0 is expected to be available in the third quarter of this year. So, with Sun now positioned to compete with both Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR, what factors do you think will most heavily influence the development and adoption of rich internet applications (RIAs)?

The first thing to accept is that RIAs are here to stay. So the question now is: which platform, toolset and overall environment is going to give you the most power and control over the applications that you want to build?

What will make a difference in this segment, as we go forward, is the ability to provide a programming environment that developers are used to and they feel comfortable with. That way, they can extend their applications to run as RIAs and begin thinking about building new ones that start out life as web-driven from their first inception.

When do you think we'll be fully comfortable with Web 2.0 technologies, such as mashups, and be able to look back and wonder how we lived without them?

And are Web 3.0 technologies and the Semantic Web close on the horizon?For many of us, Web 2.0 technologies are already an intricate part of our lives, whether you are looking up friends on a social-networking site, watching a movie trailer online or getting directions using 3D mapping technology.

Innovation on the web is happening at a phenomenal pace, and I think the next-generation web will be here and become a part of our lives without most users even recognising it, as they simply embrace and use it.

Back in 2006, you touted Ajax as one of the prime movers behind the next stage of growth for the internet. Leaving the Windows Presentation Foundation and the Expression toolset aside for a moment, what wider factors do you think will change the web between now and the end of the decade?

Ajax was a sign that there was demand for richer, more usable, more powerful application experiences. The web alone wasn't good enough. As we continue to evolve, I think those same patterns hold true.

At Microsoft, we will continue to focus on the breadth of technology needed to make it possible for developers to continue to push the envelope on application capability, usability and experience, while minimising complexity, and we'll continue to enable businesses to take advantage of the changing market dynamics around hardware with continued focus on web, desktop and mobility.