I spent the morning examining the M$DN info that I could find about Visual Studio 7 and M$ .NET. I found a number of links and articles. I’ll only bookmark the ones that don’t crash Netscape 4.73. Here we go: the C# starting page will get you started with white papers and the like. The C# intro has more details. There is also a C# language reference available in Word format. Which I have not read yet. The next thing that really does sort of intrigue me is the ATL Server development platform using C++ as a rapid application deployment system. Interesting in that IIS and C++ are finally working together for a web client platform. Cool. More on the next generation of ADO. Finally, there is .NET overshadowing all of this stuff… browse for yourself I didn’t have the patience and lost interest by that time.
Bottom line… M$ is about 6 years away from going the way of the dodo. The general lack of public enthusiasm coupled with the bad media and lack of trust (I.E. Viri and the like) are the beginings of the end, I think. It doesn’t have anything to do with the government, Oracle, or Redhat. I think that people are generally loosing interest. At least I am. I probably should not speak for everyone. Make your own judgements.