>> OK, .NET is crushing every other development tool on the Windows platform
>> (even the excellent Delphi) and if .NET 2.0 fulfill its promises, maybe
>> it will be the time for VFP to enter in "maintenance mode".

I think this is a very common misconception that people have. .NET is not crushing all the development tools out there. Instead, .NET is the latest platform to run code on. In the past, people compiled DOS EXEs. Later, those were replaced with Windows EXEs. Now, we are in the middle of a move to the next level, which is "Managed Code".

Future operating systems will use managed code, rather than "native code". This adds a whole lot of value, since this way, the operating system can manage what code can do and what resources it will have available for that. Right now, most people know "Managed Code" as ".NET" or "The CLR". Although the term "Managed Platform" is also quite common.

You can see this happen in a number of areas. Windows Longhorn is a great example of how the operating system moves to managed code. SQL Server 2005 is another.

Visual Studio is one way to create code for the managed platform. There are also a lot of other ways to develop code for the managed platform. The number of managed languages is quite large (over a year ago, I think there were 27 languanges... since then, I lost track).

Note that .NET is actually an "enabler" more than a "crusher". In the future, it will be possible to use Delphi to write code for SQL Server for instance. In the past, T-SQL was the only option.

Delphi, btw, seems to have a very good product to compile code for the managed platform. Or at least that's what I hear (I have never used it myself).

So saying that ".NET crushes all the development environments" is incorrect from a technical point of view. It's a bit like saying "Win32 crushes all the development environments", just because they previously used to compile DOS versions.


Markus