>VS .Net is the future of Windows Application Development. To believe anything else - I say to them...."Denial is not just a river in Egypt..."

Lol.

Good reasons, but there are a couple more pieces you're missing. The big one is the server, Windows.NET and IIS6. We haven't seen much of those, and while the stability of the OS will be nice, they'll take IIS6 apart with a fine tooth comb.

I'm not saying MS doesn't have the best platform, in fact, at the moment, they have the only one thats not more than a cloud of smoke (Sun ONE), but like I said, most of it will come down to the servers.

The language independence may not be as important as OS independence. Take a look at what Kylix/Delphi offer as far as .NET and ONE support on Windows AND Linux. Seems to me that the people making decisions to go ahead with projects woudl be more interested in using one syntax for two platforms instead of two syntaxes for one platform. Plus, the flexibility in the choosing the server (remember when Gartner said "Dump IIS NOW!") coudl be another key point.

VS.NET does look cool, and for Windows develoeprs, it woudl be a crime to ignore it when it is finally released. But as far as the end all to be all, I'd like to see a couple more Web Service platform offerings (IBM's in particular, particulary in the Open Source avenue) before I decide where the future will land.

Quite literally, and ironically, the best product for creating Web services at the moment is VFP7 ;-)