Jess

At the start of the century the UK was the world's powerhouse. We are now in the American Age. The next age will come in our lifetimes and it will be the Chinese age.

Will you rush to become Chinese?

The UK may be grey but having travelled widely I'd say that it has a great deal going for it and my wife loves it when we are there.

I see the same with dotNET. The sky won't fall, even as power and prestige shifts, some of us will make the move, others will stay where they are.

We cannot say what the future will hold. Who knows, maybe a new hardware architecture will make these discussions moot and wipe out programming as a profession because smart computers will understand needs and create bug-free code.

For now we have to deal with certainties. We all agree that we should look at more than just one tool, just as it helps to speak more than one language. But as one who jumped to Java when it became "obvious" that VFP was doomed in 1997, i think I felt just like you at the time. After that experience I'd say "don't be bleeding edge, be leading edge". dotNET is at the stage Java was at in 1995. Unproven, and with the real benefits from Swing etc still to come.

Regards

JR