>OK, so there's a Visual Fortran and I now recall that someone has a Visual Cobol or even a Cobol.NET. OK, cool...but so what? How does that validate/invalidate whether .NET can be used for desktop/Client Server apps?
>

Hi Kevin,
It desn't validate anything, like your explanations doesn't validate that .Net is good for C/S applications.
There is only one way to validate as one developers tool is good for some job - to test a few points:
- speed of processing(cost for using)
- speed of development(cost for development)
I hope that you remember my previous postings. May be we are one of few companies in UT, which have chance to make the same app in VFP and VB.Net and we very know diffrences.

If some one ask me to maka web application in VFP I will refuse, if depend on me. If the case is for desktop or C/S you know my preferences.
In reality my earnings are 50:50 VFP:.Net.

Even I am very happy because last two days hall in Varna University was full, when we presented with guys from MS Bulgaria new features in VS2005 and SQL Server2005.
Of course VS2005 presentation was how fast we could build portal with ASP2.0 :-P