Yeah, by unistalling .NET and installing visual studio 6. Seriously though, .net is neither trendy or redundant. Depending on the language you are coming from you'll be amazed at how much more you can accomplish in .net compared to your previous language. Things that used to be difficult or require 3rd party tools are now easy and built-in to the language. .net 2003 comes with an obfuscator(?) or you can get a tool for .net 2002 that will do it for you.