State of DotNet

[A. Lloyd Flanagan]

hungjunglu at yahoo.com (Hung Jung Lu) wrote in message news:<8ef9bea6.0305150747.4bd6d992 at posting.google.com>...
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> 
> Is the MS DotNet framework taking off, or is it failing to attract
> developers? Just curious. (I am thinking of DotNet more as component
> architecture, not just the CLR.) Anyone have any predictions on when
> it'll become *big*, if ever?

I can say that's it's creating a lot of excitement in Microsoft
development circles.

Unfortunately, the industry today is sharply divided into two camps
for distributed applications: 1) Microsoft solutions, and 2)
practically everybody else (mostly J2EE implementations).  The two
environments are so incompatible that I don't know of anyone who's got
them interoperating.

So, basically, you've got to put your eggs in one basket or another. 
And that's the biggest barrier to .Net acceptance I see now.  If some
of the technologies involved could be available in other environments,
it could become *big*, but historically Microsoft hasn't been
interested in that sort of thing.

I'm trying to make this answer as objective as possible, but I've got
to say I don't feel comfortable with using .Net.  J2EE isn't as open
as it should be, but that environment is supported by a lot of
different companies.  You don't like Sun's solutions, you can use
IBM's (and a lot of people do).  On the other hand, a lot of companies
have built their entire infrastructure on Microsoft solutions, and if
that's where you are and you want to stay there, .Net looks like a
really good technology.