I will soon be over the hill, but I am a seasoned C++ programmer, have been all my life, love it. I dream code in my sleep I love it so much. I recently moved from windows platform over to linux. Spent most of my years in assembler and borland C++, then visual studio/MFC, then on to .NET and WPF (which is what made me change to linux, esp metro, its damn ugly!)  I personally think that Linux is the future of computing. Qt, is definitely the framework leading the edge today as it is on all operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Portable Devices too) which gives it a big push UP.. plus it's learning curve is pretty good esp. for people like me coming from MFC its almost too easy to use. I think we will be seeing a BIG change in Linux over the next 5-10 years unlike anything we've seen in the past. The only thing standing in Linux's way now is the Hardwaremongers who have MS in their pockets (or vice versa), like ATI(AMD), NVidia, Creative, Intel, etc...  proprietary code should be made for ALL major operating systems when new drivers + devices come out, not just for the "favorable" ones....   Aside from that, if people keep pulling together to unify Linux's various distributions and variations of standards, I think a bright future will be in store for sure. Right now I wonder if its going to be Mir, or Wayland?? hmmm or already decided to stick with Xorg everyone??? :)

(i hear Mir is quite fast, nothing about wayland though---and down with acronym speak, is it so hard to type "oh my god" and not "omg" ----geez!)