[InterceptPoint]

As I predicted about a year ago, .NET will dominate the marketplace and Java is doomed if not dead.

Microsoft's .NET is write once and run once but in almost any language you like. I happen to like C# but there are a lot of VB fans out there. In my opinion .NET is just better than Java in part because it has a target hardware platform (as opposed to the Sun write once debug everywhere strategy for Java) but also because Microsoft obviously learned a lot from studying the good, bad and ugly of Java. I built a very sophisticated .aspx website as my learning exercise for ASP.NET and C# and I have shelved my Java stuff for ever.

[wireplay]

I started on ASP.NET and, due to some other needs, I switched over to Windows forms for my current apps. It is really nice and the next version is really sweet.

Being the kind of mainframe background guy that I am, I decided to test C# against a legacy language. C# smoked it on a data read/parse by at least 10-1 (C# was doing a lot more work so it wasn't a fair comparison).

With everything being exposed through Visual Studios, including the next version of SQL Server, it pays to develop in VS.NET so that skills can be transferred easily.

[wireplay]

Best article ever written on .NET IMHO. There are also 2 others in the series:

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-958923.html