Markus;

Anything concerned with technology is subject to change. It would take a book to express the meaning of my words in the manner intended.

Microsoft touts its current technology as the answer to your prayers. Take ASP or VB as an example. Both “hit the wall” and had to be replaced. Dot NET was discussed before ASP 3.0 was released. People have discussed the demise of VFP for about 9 years and yet it is still a product offered by Microsoft.

Forgive me for my attempt at humor at all this. I have no concept when Microsoft will replace Dot NET and really do not care. It is inevitable that there will be a change in the future if not by Microsoft then by some other entity. Perhaps the world will be turned into dust sooner then we think - who knows?

Once upon a time there were Mainframes. Many Main framers put his/her head into the sand and have not see the light of day since.

We are led by Microsoft, its visions, and marketing. One thing I am certain of besides technology changing – the next technology will have a product or tool with the words VB tied to it. Perhaps “Virtual VB”? It might be granite tabloids and steel chisels, but VB will somehow be a part of the verbiage if Microsoft has anything to do with it! :)

Tom


>>> Dot NET – your days are limited!
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>Very true. Like every other technology, .NET will be replaced one day.
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>I would be interested in hearing when you would forsee that to happen? Considering how much money Microsoft currently invests in moving upsolutely everything - from the operating system to applications - to .NET, it seems to be an unlikely occurance any time soon.
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>Of course, there is always the possibility that Windows and Microsoft will go away altogether. Linux does have some momentum.
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>But let's just say Microsoft was to announce today that .NET was a mistake, and they will continue on the traditional, unmanaged platform. This would mean that all the work that they have done recently, from operating systems to databases and applications, would have to be thrown out the window. The work of several teams that have team-member count in the thousands would be nullified. Microsoft would probably not be able to release another version of SQL Server for years, and the next operating system would probably sometime in the next decade.
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>I just do not see that scenario come true, unless Microsoft completely goes out of business (and with somewhere between 40 and 60 billion $ in cash reserves, that does not seem to be likely).
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>Will the technology be called ".NET"? Will it still be called "The Managed Platform"? Probably not. Marketing will have to come up with new terms. But the fact is that we are currently in a period where the intire Microsoft side of our industry moves from unmanaged code (that is all the code generated by tools such as traditional C++, old VB, VFP, and many others) to managed code (as it is now generated by C#, VB, and some 27 or so other languages).
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>There is a major aspect that people do not currently understand: All the have built for a long time has been Win32 software (DOS software before). There were a wide variety of tools available to build Win32 software, including Fox. Now, we are migrating from Win32 to Managed Code (a.k.a. ".NET"). And once again, there are a number of tools that allow developers to build for that platform. Visual Studio is one of them.
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>Whether people want to use Visual Studio is a lifestyle choice and should be a completely individual decission. But running o the managed platform (no matter what it is called), is a major part of future computing strategies.
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>Markus