Kevin,

>I see many organizations of 20 or less that have adopted (or are adopting .NET). I'm sure you'll realize that .NET isn't just for large companies. Here on the East Coast, I see a big trend in small/medium companies offering web services and application development services that are moving to VS2005.

at least in germany .NET puny compared to java in large companies and adoption rates are probably lagging 1 or 2 years from US values. No, I don't have data to cite, but .NET makes less sense over here, especially as anti-MS sentiment (see linux porting) tends to get "political". I am not a vfp-totaller, but being able to connect/crank out java makes more business sense in MY current market. My larger "beef" with .NET even a few years ago was more on the missing elegance of a identical programmer interface against remote and local (read: loaded) data, as a local / embedded database can always be added for cursor similar operations. LINQ seems to adress this better than coming java. But the big decision here is often to build something which is fenced into PC's or perhaps intel architecture. The big budget is still with the big iron, and they want to at least control it. Java is their compromise.

SO I keep my "static language" skill from rusting by working more in SUN territory, with a few seldom visits to the trenches of c programming for fll's or system glue.

regards

thomas