I don't think so. There was a time when the development environment was chosen depending on the app. that needed to be built.

You needed something real-time. C++ or assembler was highly considered.

For those that wanted to be introduced to computers. BASIC, Pascal or Modula-2 was the choice.

You needed a data-centric app. There was a time when there were many options available.

Artificial intelligence app. was needed, Lisp, Prolog...

Perhaps dBase at a certain time was all there realistically was. But that was for data-centric apps. Nobody used dBase to do games (I mean serious) development.

Can we really trust .Net as the universal solution? Even without real security for the source code? Even with the weaknesses of XML (also called ASCII on steroids). XML will be ok when we get those pentium-6 50 ghz but until then we have to endure it. And there are probably other weaknesses surrounding .Net. But developers don't really seem to care that much about it.

.Net should have been released with all the features that were in other MS products. Qualities of Visual BASIC (Sorry can't tell one because I never developed with it), qualities of VFP (Command window, Macro substitution...). In short the base of .Net should've been a little bit higher than what there is now. And what we have now has been on the market for some years.

But that is probably normal when you release a development tool that is supposed to replace every other development tool on the market <vbg>



>But isn't that the way of everything? I remember when dBase was all there realistically was, then Fox came along and they coexisted just fine. Now there's .NET. What's the big deal? Use it or don't. Each person will make their own decision as they need to. Is dBase still around corporately? I really don't know. I'm sure there are a number of Paradox developers out there that have no clue about Foxpro. Who cares? Do what you think is good for you. It's not like if you learn .NET that suddenly you lose all your Foxpro knowledge anyway. If you try .NET and it doesn't work out, go back to Fox. Is it such a bad thing to know more than one language? Ok, I probably wouldn't go for Powerbuilder... <s>
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>>But the sad truth is that the market has decided that .Net is the tool to use for everything.
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