Bill,

My article analysis capabilities don't come close to yours, so I will offer comments rather than analysis.

I was doing OK in the http://www.sdtimes.com/news/067/special1.htm article until I came to the following:
“In order to design systems with the future in mind, we’d like to see customers move to the .NET platform because of its availability and easy implementation of Web services in the future, because of ease of integration with [Microsoft’s] Office tools and things like Exchange server; things that we think that they would want to do in the future, potentially with other midmarket products,” said Dupre.".
From what I've been able to comprehend, Visual FoxPro can meet virtually all of these future benefits and do it TODAY in a very straightforward and non-complex manner (prior comments in the article cited the extreme complexity of .NET that is a deterrent to its adoption).
I can't tell you how much it pisses me off that this fact is unknown to the market influencers!!!

I find the rest of the article to be somewhat balanced but I was struck that all of the shops mentioned are actually using .NET portions in their low impact (seemingly all non-revenue producing) areas.

The second article, the editorial, seems to contradict some of the first article's points. Specifically that "Many Windows shops have begun developing for .NET, and have found the .NET Framework, XML-based Web services, ADO.NET and ASP.NET to offer a platform that’s reasonably easy to design, develop and deploy applications on.". The other article says anything but "reasonably easy".
I do think it is correct in saying that .NET is proprietary for all intents and purposes at this time.

All in all I see these articles as too easily dismissing the current installed environment and the implications on conversion to either of the "future" platforms.

cheers


>The latest edition of Software Development Times (December 1, 2002) has printed both a large article on .NET development as well as an opinion piece on .NET. The article on .NET development is titled "Delivering on a Promise" with a subtitle of "Despite a steeper-than-anticipated learning curve, .NET adopters believe Microsoft has sown seeds for future development" and can be found at http://www.sdtimes.com/news/067/special1.htm. The editorial is titled "Building .NET Apps" and can be found at http://www.sdtimes.com/opinions/opinion_067.htm.
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>Microsoft is not an active advertiser in this magazine, so opinions and articles about Microsoft's products will show less bias than, say, Information Week. Both articles have a slightly more positive opinion of .NET than I do at this point. The articles do indicate that .NET to date is a fringe product with not too much penetration. With one exception, C# and VB.NET are not mentioned at all -- indicating that people aren't doing much development with either language.
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>There's too many quotes to post, so read the links yourself and report what you think are the highlights...
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>Bill Anderson