>I disagree here. .Net will be successful, but it will take some time. Remember, this *is* Microsoft. Of all the things MS does, it does marketing best.

Let me get this straight - you are saying .NET will be popular with developers because of MS marketing? Well, maybe they have sold you, but they haven't sold the vast majority of developers and it is questionable if they ever will.

Sure, they may eventually make some statement based on a bogus marketing study ("our customers tell us...") like the 5 million VB programmers Ballmer claimed which later was magically adjusted to 3.5 million - but that's MS marketing < bg >.

Hate to tell you this Craig, but .NET is the furthest thing from the minds of most IT management - they may start to think about it in a few years, but by then .NET will not be .NET and the endless cycle continues...