I've been living in the Netherlands for nearly 7 years and haven't even tried to learn Dutch yet. Completely concur that it's an easy and wonderful country to live in, and there's tons of work for good software developers.
West-Flanders is actually (almost) Dutch only, not a lot of IT in here and a lot of agricultre. I don't mind, but i suppose a lot of older people ( who don't know english) could have a hard time having a conversation with you :)
Where did you live?
I'm West-Flemish myself and still live here, but I also get my share of snarky remarks of blogging in English or reading stuff primary in English. If you have a website with some text in Dutch and you make a spelling mistake then you will certainly get (angry) mails about it. Or when you use an English word instead of a Dutch, for some that is another capital offence.
If that sounds ridiculous keep in mind we have people proverbial running after busses and filling complaints when the bus company dares to advertise something with English words in it.
Ans seeing how many Dutch related contests Flemish participants win, I have sometimes the feeling that we are better in Dutch than our neighbours in the Netherlands. So yeah the Dutch language is really important in this part of the world.
For some things I can see the benefits of being able to promote (or even force) the local language. I'm personally convinced that from a social POV it helps when your neighbour understands you and speaks the same languages.
But on the other hand in the global age we are living we shouldn't overestimate the importance of it. It sometimes depresses me if I see how much energy gets lost in those kind of discussions.
The people were very nice (like, almost Hot Fuzz nice :-D), probably why the few who berated my Dutch speaking abilities stood out :-)
Fortunately a lot of people don't mind if you aren't fluent in it as they value the effort more then being 100% correct. And those who react hostile just don't understand how difficult the language is. Hell even natives have sometimes problems with all the grammatical rules the Dutch language has!
Hot fuzz is really one of my favourite movies, then again I'm a bit of an anglophile regarding movies/series/... . :-) I lived btw also in Blankenberge for 12 years and born in Bruges. Nowadays I live at the other end of West Flanders.
How come? Just no interest? Don't like it?