And the beauty of it all is that it is totally proprietary and only runs on Microsoft Windows compatible machines.

Until Microsoft captures the entire computing world - there are other platforms out there that do computing.

Do you want to lock in to one vendor's solution, or keep your options open with open, approved, interchangable standards such as come from IETF, WWW, and other open forums?

There is some talk that others may develop open source run times for other platforms that is .NET compatible, but that has not set well in Redmond.

By the way... all the Microsoft .NET products produce an intermediate byte code.... you must have an appropriate run time engine to interpret this byte code into executable code, or a post processor to compile byte code into machine language your computer understands (at run time, every time it runs).

Some things to think about before you put all your eggs in one basket.

BTW - C# looks amazingly like Java - but Microsoft can't use the Java product line do to contract violations with Sun Microsystems. Having a consistent intermediate code and platform 'run time' is just like Java... Coincidence?

Having a common library of called routines available to all languages is the same thing IBM has done with the Language Environment (LE) option.... and it's been around for years.

The more things change, the more they start to all look the same.....

--------------------------------------------------------- Michael S Hines | Phone 765-494-5875 Purdue University | FAX 765-496-1380 Information Technology@Purdue | Email mshines@purdue.edu OS/390 Systems Programmer | Certifications: 1059 Freehafer Hall | CIA, CISA, CFE, CDP West Lafayette, IN 47907-1061 |