>>Saying that .NET will take 4 to 5 years to mature is a wonderful headline, but the starting point was 1998/1999, not 2002.
>
>Um, no. What Gates is talking about here goes way beyond VS.NET or the .NET Framework. Funny that wasn't mentioned in this thread. I'm pretty sure when Gates says "4 to 5 more years" he means "at least 5 years". If it were anything else, he'd let you know.

Right. Let me clarify. Gates was talking about the whole .NET My services thing that has kind of blew up in his face. The complete text of his speech is here (http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2002/07-24netstrategy.asp).

From there, the implication in the headline and this discussion was that deploying *ANY* .NET applications (Webforms, Winforms, or Web services) would not be advisable for 5 years. This is what I objected to.