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Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

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IainB:
@CodeTRUCKER: It could seem that M$oft had unilaterally mandated the demise of VB, but as @f0dder pointed out:
VB6 is from 1998. As of March 2008 it has entered MS's unssuported phase. And that's about time, really - there's a lot of things that are horribly, horribly wrong with VB. 10 years is (way) enough.
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We are creatures of habit, and it's comforting to be able to continue with your programming in the languages that you have invested so much of your cognitive surplus in over the years, and so I guess in that way I still miss PLAN IV, FORTRAN, and BASIC - and even teaching my kids to use LOGO and BASIC. I have noticed that getting over the first language you learned and moving to another language often seems to be a big hurdle for many people. This is what is meant by "Resistance to change".

Having said that, I did wonder about the seemingly brutal and unannounced (well, I hadn't been told to expect it) introduction by M$oft of the ".NET Framework", and I thought to myself, "What the heck is this? Why is this necessary?" Then I saw how, unless I wished to be excommunicated, I really could not avoid having M$oft install this .NET Framework - what seemed to be a fat, bloated support infrastructure for .NET onto my Windows OS. This was supposed to make my PC experience a better world? I doubted it very much, and I still do. What it does do is consolidate M$oft's monopoly "lock-in" of us as helpless customers - and the same seems to be being repeated for Silverlight, which is becoming almost as promiscuous as Adobe products in installing itself into your OS. No thanks.

Regardless of the words spoken or arguments written about this, this probably isn't about "improving the experience of the end user" or "making life easier for developers" at all, but more a matter of unpublished M$oft policy for maintaining continued supremacy by introducing compellingly attractive/necessary products that improve M$oft lock-in. Nothing wrong in that in the capitalist model - it's what all great computer companies have practiced since at least the '70s. If, as a by-product of this, the experience of the developers can be said to have been improved in some way, well then, that's what it was all about, after all - wasn't it?    ;)

Presumably M$oft feels the need to keep itself ahead of their competitive monster, Java, and now the new kraken - the fat, bloated Adobe AIR.

CodeTRUCKER:
@IainB

Given your comments and experience, the *safest* pathway would be to stay away from the "locker-inners" and try to get connected with a solid community-supported language/IDE. 

Ok.... that might sound like a good argument, except aren't all "community"-supported initiatives maintained (read: controlled) by a single individual or small group?  Sounds like it might be trading one "locker-inner" for another, right?

I do like the concept of regardless of which locker-inner we willingly incarcerate ourselves by we can use the experience to grow!  That is always good.

SKA:
You may look at :
http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET.htm

SKA

Renegade:
You may look at :
http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET.htm

SKA
-SKA (January 03, 2011, 11:48 PM)
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$1,200 or $2,000. Ouch. Definitely not for playing with or starting out.

IainB:
@Renegade:
$1,200 or $2,000. Ouch. Definitely not for playing with or starting out.
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Yes, ClarionNET looks like it might be a good (read "potentially profitable") entrepreneurial bolt-on to the .NET Framework. It looks like it could be quite innovative, but I can't help thinking that it's unnecessary. I mean, why would you really need to use it?

However, I am hugely sceptical. I didn't read much more about ClarionNET after my BS alarm went off. The site lacked credibility in my view - the potential giveaways being a lack of solid information about the company (I looked quite hard for that), the broken or bad use of English, and links to a lot of dubious-looking and incestuous sites from so-called "worldwide distributors". Like a lot of those scam sites that have been developed from inside the old Eastern bloc countries and India and that keep wanting to sell you "web development services" or for you to download software to "Speed up your PC!" (the latter now become a modern-day euphemism for a trojan).

I'd advise caution. Hold onto your wallets. Any organisation that does not publish pertinent and verifiable facts about itself and its formation may have something to hide. I always apply the general rule-of-thumb on "business ethics" given by Sir Adrian Cadbury in a Harvard Business Review paper in the '80s:
"If a business organisation or process is unable to stand the hard light of scrutiny, then there is probably something unethical about it."
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