State of DotNet

[Hung Jung Lu]

Gerhard Häring <gh at ghaering.de> wrote in message news:<slrnbc9qpg.1po.gh at haering.opus-gmbh.net>...
> IMO newsgroups are hardly representative of the user base. In particular,
> the developers hooked on MS technologies aren't heavy usenet users in my
> experience.

Es ist moeglich. Aber it's not just newsgroups. Consider for instance
Boston Globe's article:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/114/business/The_hype_has_faded_but_Microsoft_still_hot_on_NET+.shtml

"By now, millions of computers were supposed to be sharing data
automatically over the Internet with the help of a new Microsoft Corp.
technology called .NET, which was meant to transform the way people
use computers. It hasn't happened. Indeed, after the initial hype,
.NET has faded from public view. But .NET is still on Microsoft's
radar scope, big and bright as ever."

> I'm pretty sure .NET will be a great success for Microsoft, eventually.

Is this like wie man sagt: "Brazil is the country of the future. And
tomorrow it will continue to stay so."? :)

> Hopefully, .NET won't have much impact on Python at all.
> > Stick with VC6 for a while?
> Stick with gcc on FreeBSD, for a while? ;-)

Erh? VC7 a.k.a. VS.NET is out, then VC8, VC9, etc. Will Python stay
with VC6 forever? That's the question. Klar?

Given the unpopularity of .NET, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft
keep their double effort in shipping Visual Studio with the
native-vs-CLR option, for a while.

> So if all you target is Windows Clients (web- or thick clients) and
> servers, .NET with Visual Studio is a very good option. 

On the enterprise server side, .NET is just a product, much like J2EE.
Sure, they are important and quite useful. But that does not mean that
every programmer will be using .NET or J2EE for all applications. Java
as a viable generic language died a long time ago (why use a runtime
when you can go native?) J2EE is a whole different world, it's more
like a product (or what Microsoft would call "framework") than a
language per se. On the other hand, the previous component technology
COM applies not just to web/database. Asking all the COM people to
move over to .NET is not gaining as much support as Microsoft would
like to see.

If you asked me now whether .NET will be all over places as touted by
Microsoft, I would say: "It'll be big someday. And tomorrow it will
continue to stay so." :)

Hung Jung