Actually, you have a few misconceptions here...

1. While the bulk of the framework was written in C# (we do have C++ programmers, after all), the VB runtime were written in VB.NET, the J# runtime was written in J#. Internally, apps are being written in VB.NET as well. It all depends on the background of the developer, strangely enough <g>

2. The Mono effort (which is porting things to other platforms) includes a VB.NET compiler as well as the C# one.

yag

>Hi,
>
>In order to make .NET work doesn't Microsoft need to have inoperability with other platforms like Linux, Unix, Apple, etc. This would be necessary to compete with Sun's java which is a platform independent langauge. Microsoft in the past has built all its applications, languages, and tools to be Windows dependent to drive sales of the windows operation system platform.
>
>I wonder if there are any plan to port either C# or VB.NET to other platforms, or is this irrelevant. I know under Windows that many langauges can be used like fortran, cobol, perl, C#, C++, VB, etc, and the .NET framework will compile whatever language using the CRL at runtime. I suppose if Linux, Unix, Apple, etc had a .NET framework layer, any .NET language that followed the .NET rules could be copied to any platform and executed within the .NET layer of that platform. I don't know of any strategic alliance between Microsoft and other platform vendors to allow .NET to work seamlessly between platforms. I do know that C# has been submitted and accepted by a computer regulatory body for standardization.
>
>I know there have been some efforts in other platforms to build a .NET compatible layer, but they are all revolving around C#. It is my understanding that C# is the native language in which .NET is written. It seem to me that C# would give me more options in the long run, and I would be afraid that VB.NET would chain me to the Windows platform and limit sales of any applications I write to the Windows platform.