John, With all due respect. You made it divisive. I read this forum all the time and I see all kinds of off-topic stuff that is either personally offensive to me, or that I just disagree with. But I do the mature thing if I don't want to hear it - ignore it. This is just someone else's discussion that had a little side trail. Ignore it and move on if you don't like it. And don't be hypocritical. Just relax, dude.

- High School Freshman (1975) - No PCs available as far as I knew - Mainframe: with teletype stations (3 of them in the room) - Language: some sort of basic - Anyone remember this? 10 REM First Program 20 Print "Hello world?" 30 END - Better get that line right the first time or you would see: "Syntax error" - And the results were displayed on that ugly green bar paper. Am I alone in this memory?

Does anyone seriously think that Linux has a chance for the desktop? Only Mac OSX has a chance to see growth on the desktop - and that will be minimal (maybe 10-20% and that would be huge).

Sean, While I understand that you do not seem to see .net at the university you work for, I think that your world is a fairly narrow one. I have worked as a developer in the business world for 20 years. I have worked for very large companies, small companies and startups. Since I started using .net (from 1.0 days) it has become heavily relied upon (especially in in-house development projects) on almost every project that I have worked on. And you don't have to read too much to find that it is very quickly becoming the platform of choice for many companies (large and small). As far as applications that are out there that are built using the .net platform - you seriously underestimate. First of all, I am sure that many of the websites you frequent are asp.net websites. Secondly, most software that businesses use other than Office, IE, etc, are custom systems, of which MANY have .net as their platform. You can read a lot about this sort of development where J2EE is losing ground - and .net is becoming more and more the platform of choice (especially in the business world). And this is where most of the money and effort is taking place. So, for you to think that .net is not 'out there', is just not true. Its practically everywhere - just like MS and Windows. And I am not a MS lover. But I have made quite a nice living for many years off of their software. In my experience the university world wants the free stuff (open source, linux, java) and all that - because they have no money and they are the idealistic crowd. But in the real world (where all of the money is made and people actually pay for software) MS and .net are Kings. How else do you think MS is such a powerhouse that no one can dethrone? Its because they own the business world - Front end and back-end. And seriously, no one in business cares about multi-platform desktop apps. They all use Windows! How many Fortune XXXX companies use anything other Windows as their desktop. If people want multi-platform they do a web app. The only exceptions to this are the few desktop apps that need to be multi-platform (MS, Adobe, etc). Everyone else makes Windows apps. Thats just the way it is. I know of NO ONE who uses MONO for the business apps. That does not mean there isn't anyone. But that woudl be rare! I like the concept of MONO. But until Linux or MAC can make a dent in the desktop world (a long ways away, if ever) then it is too risky for businesses. No CTO would ever take a chance like that. It would be foolish. Look at the real world numb

From Sean: "Umm, is ANYONE using ANYTHING that requires ANY version of .NET? As a consumer, I've come across NOTHING that even remotely requires it." Dude, what planet do you live on? RKL

Well said.

The fact that people (in this case a c++ programmer) constantly feel the need to tear others down (in this case c# programmers) continues to amaze me. Those who ARE smart (anyone who uses a tool to accomplish a given task well) don't need to bring others down. Those who CLAIM to be smart (c++ programmer) by showing that others are dumb is the one who in reality is _ _ _ _. A smart thing to do would be to come up with something more creative, original and useful to write about and discuss. How about writing an example of where and how using pointers in c++ is a better tool for a given situation. Then we can use our brains to discuss something that may actually be helpful. Sincerely, Programmer (period)