Microsoft .NET - For Real and For Living

I have always been skeptical when Microsoft introduce new technology to the real world. The latest (well, it was about 5 years or so ago), Microsoft unveiled the .NET platform to match Sun's Java development language.

Java is kind of "program once, and run on many platform" philosophy. Microsoft .NET is meant for Microsoft's owned Windows family of operating system. What I could not understand is that the common language run time (CLR) is available to all language supported by Microsoft namely (VB, C#, C++, J# and ASP). Regardless of what language you use or decided to use, it would be compiled to a common run time environment.

Come with the package is the "decompiler" which would reverse the effect of compiler. Since the .NET platform library is common to all language, you could practically write an application in VB, compiled it to .NET runtime and then decompiled it back to other language like C# or J#. It is very interesting.

It is a lot easier to work with (regardless of the language) and you could have a very useful application in a few hours. For example, I could create a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) HTML page editor in just 2 or 3 hours working on the code. It uses the same engine as Microsoft Frontpage and Internet Explorer. Pretty cool !!.

I did go to .NET intensive training - well, it is 3 hours a day / 5 day week for 3 months. It was kind of tiring and very exhaustive. At the end, I valued the training more than any other similar course I have attended so far.

I will be using .NET for many years to come as it is very easy and I could do more in less time. I have more confident now. Is is for real.

(pssst.... I need more RAM for my notebook as the new Visual Studio 2005 is so resource hungry. I have never use 2 GB of memory before. With .NET tools, 2 GB is just a breeze.. Since, I only have 1GB at the moment, a lots of disk swapping activity happen and it slows down my PC tremendously. Never mind, it is an investment and I am pretty sure it really pays off !! )