Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises?

cyclocommuter writes with this snippet from The Register's assessment of whether Microsoft's .NET framework has been a success: "If the goal of .NET was to see off Java, it was at least partially successful. Java did not die, but enterprise Java became mired in complexity, making .NET an easy sell as a more productive alternative. C# has steadily grown in popularity, and is now the first choice for most Windows development. ASP.NET has been a popular business web framework. The common language runtime has proved robust and flexible. ... Job trend figures here show steadily increasing demand for C#, which is now mentioned in around 32 per cent of UK IT programming vacancies, ahead of Java at 26 per cent."

Comments

C# first choice? Ummm, no.

[CritterNYC]

C# is probably the first choice for .NET development. But I doubt C# is the first choice for all Windows development. Especially considering that no major commercially-available software is .NET-based, .NET isn't even used for Microsoft Office or Microsoft's other software packages, and using .NET requires you to install the rather large .NET framework on a PC before you can even install your app unless you're using Windows 7 (because XP, the world's most popular OS has no .NET framework pre-installed).

Answer from a mobile phone and server developer:

[Hurricane78]

What is .NET? ;)

Re:Ease of writing doesn't convince me

[minginqunt]

Java hasn't eliminated constructs that are harmful, all it's really done is popularised a few more harmful constructs of its own.

Re:.Not

[binarylarry]

It's accurate, Mono really is Open Source AIDS.

It's contagious and is going to take a long time to kill, so it leaves plenty of time to spread.

Don't use it

[Snaller]

And avoid any program which requires .net - its dot bloat.

Re:No

[Runaway1956]

Flamebait? Not the old Wombat!!

Personally, I don't have much use for dotnet, or .net, or whatever. I played with it a little when I was strictly using Windows. Never saw much point in it. Not a coder, just a user - and all that I could see, was that MS was trying to corner a market where there was no market. Yeah - Enterprise fell in love with it, but what does dotnet offer Joe Schmuck, or his cousin, Joe Sixpack? Phht. Same with Silverlight. And, oh yeah, that Windows Virtual Machine thing that was supposed to displace Sun's JVM or JRE. Phhht.

Does anyone ever wonder what Windows might be like now, if MS had concentrated on building an OPERATING SYSTEM, first and foremost? We might have seen Win7 around 2003 or 4, without the Vista fiasco. Now in 2009, we might be looking at something really amazing.

Come on, Microsoft. Stop futzing around with crap like browsers, dotnet, and other meaningless drivel. Just make an operating system, and let other people worry about what to run on the operating system. Kinda like Linux does. And, stop changing your numbering system twice per decade while you're at it. It's still just freaking Windows NT6 - we didn't need Win2K, WinXP, the Vista failure, and now, somehow magically start fresh with a Windows 7.

Alright, I'm done bashing Microsoft - for awhile, anyway.