>If you want to learn a ne programming language, your most important decision will be which platform(s) your application will run on. If you are willing to bet that Windows will keep on dominating, which is not going to happen, you can go for .net. However, if your applications also shall run on other devices, like Apple or Unix computers, tablets or smartphones, .net is a dead end.

Would you care to elaborate on the last part of this comment? I would like to collect more info on this .NET is not suitable for smartphones, as you mentioned.