>Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has said that building the company's .Net software architecture is more difficult than "getting to the moon or designing the 747."
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>http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-948838.html
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>Such absurdity! Bill Gates has no concept of what amount of effort went into either project! Besides in both cases there were two advantages they possessed over the .NET “strategy”.
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>1. The purpose and goal was well defined.
>2. Excellent Engineering principles were followed.
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>.NET does not have a true market or sense of direction. It is not a product that will soon replace all software development tools. Remember George Morrow, that guy who lived up the road from me in Silicon Valley? He coined a term we still use today and that is so appropriate for .NET – “Vaporware”. Vaporware perhaps not in the full sense but it certainly seems to be a mindless wondering involving billions of dollars.
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>In this case Microsoft has a product that does something but does not do it very well thus the comment from Bill Gates that Visual Studio Version 8 to be released in December of 2003, will solve all the existing problems.


That announcement of the December 2003 release date for the solution that will cure all problems is an example of the tried and true tactic of "deer in the headlights". The 'headlights" ('news' of pending release of what is really vapourware) freezes (they put off buying competitors software) them (consumers-developers) in their tracks (they stay with current release), allowing MS to ignore the competition, close the gap and run them over. It's no wonder they are treated like road-kill.


>If the release date of the product is anything like Version 7 of Visual Studio, June of 2005 might be more realistic. In the mean time that will give the marketing department the time to attempt to once again get it right. Who is the audience and who wants it? Who is willing to pay for the concept? By the way what is the concept? It seems to change every few months I have noticed.
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>Tom