Recently Microsoft came out with the news that new Windows 8 immersive applications will be coded with HTML5 and JavaScript and this has sent a shock-wave through the company’s developer community as the various programming languages they are used to seem to have been obsoleted overnight.

ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley said she has it on good authority that Silverlight will continue to be supported as well but the forums are awash in fear, uncertainty and doubt.

There are two ways of looking at this news – Microsoft hasn’t had a chance to explain in full its future path for developers and in-time coders will learn that they aren’t coding dinosaurs as some bridge technologies will ensure their skill-set is still useful.

Personally I believe that Microsoft isn’t going to abandon .NET, WPF and other development platforms. But this doesn’t mean this news isn’t huge.

What Microsoft is telling developers is HTML5 and JavaScript are the future of web programming. This isn’t exactly news to many of us but coming from Microsoft at this early a stage, the news is frankly surprising.

But then again when you realize just how much catching up the company has to do in the tablet and smartphone space, the HTML5 move is the only one which makes sense.

And herein lies the opportunity – HTML5 runs everywhere and as we saw from the recent Financial Times app, it has virtually no limitations compared to native code and as a bonus requires no app store gatekeeper to approve it.

For programmers everywhere – if you aren’t learning HTML5 – you may come to work one day and realize you are a triceratops (hat tip to TMC president Dave Rodriguez whose line I just stole.)

TMC is cosponsoring an HTML5 event called DevCon5 in Manhattan, July 27-28, 2011 and the show is a must-attend for developers, designers, media companies and executives who don’t want to be left in the dust.