>>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.
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>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.

Nope. CIOs, CTOs, etc. Guess what they'll tell people to use.

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>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 >.
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>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...

Maybe for people like Programming Managers, etc., but the CIOs and CTOs will be saying what their peers are saying...and that will be based on marketing and what industry "gurus" like the Gartner Group say.

And for the record, there are already companies working with .Net and moving their development there. I know of one large shop here in Salt Lake City that is doing that.