>I'm embarrassed to be making so many posts to this thread, but I do believe the decision by Microsoft to drop Java as a language will go down in the history books as one of those classic business mistakes.
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>I found this:
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>http://industry.java.sun.com/javanews/stories/story2/0,1072,20121,00.html
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>SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Nov 2, 1999 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Evans Marketing Services today announced that a recent study of over 500 software developers in North America, conducted last month, showed that 44% are now using Java some portion of the time, continuing a steady upward growth pattern established over the last few years.
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>In addition, the developers themselves forecast that Java use will increase to 57% by next year. Usage patterns outside North America currently stand at 43% currently using Java, with 61% projecting they will use the language next year.
>

Peter, before taking this seriously, maybe you should look at the company that did the study. Evans is not in the "unbiased observer" category in my book, and they're probably not as believable and reliable as Gartner Group, whose prognostications are less reliable than the average old gypsy woman down the street. Evans' home page is http://www.evansmarketing.com/Reports.htm

>
>I also found a survey that showed that 57% of programmers use Visual Basic as one of their two most important languages. But that's where we are today. How many folks here believe that VB will be more important five years from now than Java?

I could conduct a survey and come up with a population of software developers who believe that Clipper is the one true religion and the single source of all good applications...