It took COM about as long to mature. I don't think it means you cannot be productive with .NET today. The downside is that there is not a path that is blazed for you yet. And if you are somebody who needs that, then limiting yourself to the academic side of .NET may not be a bad idea. Still, taking the time to get acquainted and learn will be money well spent. I am seeing too many positive things with .NET to not believe it will succeed. The fact that MS is investing 5.2 Billion on research and that .NET is the focal point says to me that this will work and will work well. As we speak, I am writing a contact management system for some bank sales reps in VB .NET. Pretty darn productive and am not missing a beat when compared to either VB 6 or VFP...
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,426239,00.asp>
>I thought discussions about .Net bashing got almost to an halt. I miss those. Perhaps this will revive it ;-)