>This discussion has me thinking about when businesses moved to Windows 3.x from DOS. To this day, I still don't really know why it happened. I don't think there were enough compelling business or technical reasons to justify the expense of the change. Most technical types I knew then didn't like it. I just remember reading magazines stating how all new development would be done in Windows. I thought "Why? What are they thinking? Who would want a system that brought my blazingly fast 286 to its knees and crashed every 10 minutes?" Nevertheless, it happened. Businesses spent a ton of money upgrading their systems to run Windows, and a lot of DOS developers eventually gave in because the businesses required it. So, why did it happen? Will the same forces play a part in .Net's fate?

Joel;

It took about ten years to move from DOS to "Windows". Actually, I have copies of Widndows 286 and Windows 386 from Microsoft. If you have not seen them - you missed nothing. :)

You raised good points. Now we are trying to embrace a Windows OS that is as stable as DOS. Some companies still use DOS. For years software (Microsoft) drove the hardware industry. Remember those little dBase II and FoxBase development tools? They took up only a few bytes so to speak on a floppy disk. Then VFP took up about 80 megs and today we need almost a half a gig for the latest greatest version. Add the MSDN Library and a couple of gig's is a reasonable number.

Faster hardware to run slower software. A marriage made in marketing heaven! :)

Thirty years ago the cry was, "designed for obsolescence"! That is what drove the economy. It was a term specific to the American automotive industry. For the last ten years or so the computer has been a driving force in the economy. Perhaps that will change and a new object of attention will be highlighted. What should it be? The Cell Phone? How about Mad Magazine?


Tom