Assuming the MS sales department hasn't changed much from when I met some in 96 I doubt they could keep up with our conversations anyway, very non-technical people. That's what first convinced me I was talking to sales people here.
I have said nice things about .NET. It's the best web solution yet from MS. ASP.NET is a major leap forward for ASP, fully OO and all. It's definitely an upgrade for any MS-only shop.
As I have said repeatedly.
And of course I said it's not ready for prime time. That is what an *honest* assessment of .NET gives you. It's ready for small tools, small work, and assuming it does well in that area for a year or so it'll start to be taken more seriously for big work.
But to say that a brand-new, untested tech is ready to run mission-critical apps when you haven't seen a single example -- as certain folks here are doing -- is Salesmen-speak. An attempt to dupe.
It is *not* an insult to suggest that there may be better solutions out there. I can't imagine a developer saying that. I can't imagine someone coming to me and saying, "y'know, if you wrote that servlet as a C# web service, it would perform faster", and being insulted.
If someone were a Ford fan, I can't imagine them being insulted at someone saying Toyota's hold their value better, or Porsches have faster engines.
It's something very unique to the MS-only crowd. You view any suggestion that MS isn't the very best thing in the world as an insult.
That's a large part of why every single tech thread here on FR becomes an MS-only flame fest.
See there you go again. So according to you anybody that is using .Net for stuff in primetime has not "honestly" assessed it. That's an insult Dom. You're insulting the integrity of everybody using .Net, of everybody that thinks it is ready for their company's primetime. Just because that's not the decision you would make doesn't mean they're dishonet, it just means they aren't you.
As for mission critical stuff on new tech, like I said before: welcome to the bleeding edge. When I was working on an Exchange add on Exchange was still in beta, one of the places that was betaing our product (and therefore all Exchange) had 500 employees, they had moved the whole company over to Exchange, it was their production e-mail. Why? They were sick of the 24/7 headache lotus was giving them and at that time there was no other large e-mail system for Windows. Now personally I thought they were crazy, talk about not ready for primetime the damn thing was still in beta. But it wasn't my decision. And since they were the only large install betaing our product I really liked them, they found some good stuff. Most of these problem you think make .Net not ready for primetime won't be found if people aren't using it. Some companies (a lot of companies according to the MS list) are willing to bite the bullet. In their HONEST opinion the lumps are worth the benefits. Rather than questioning their integrity you should be paying attention to their results.