Most developers I meet and certainly the best developers I meet, when given a choice, will choose new development over maintence.

Maintenance tasks are normally relegated to less experienced and less expensive personnel. This BTW, is not an area that I would suggest developers focus..< s >...

As always, you are entitled to your opinion. Even if there is not as much new development going on at the same rate of the last decade, I think it is a safe bet that within the next 2 years, more new development will be undertaken with VS .NET. Of course, I am already doing work with and know of a LARGE company that is already embracing .NET. I am sure as time goes by, there will be more and more firms taking the leap.

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I'm just guessing, of course, but considering that

All Development= (New Development)+ (Maintenance of existing systems)

then for .NET to be as successful as some pundits predict, then the world needs to be developing new systems at the rate they were being developed through the 1990's and, guess what, that's not exactly a sure bet. I just don't see this happening, at least not in the developed world at least, certainly not in rich Western countries.
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