My problem with .NET is exactly the same as MFC or the Delphi OWL - that you are just using boilerplates. You are not really programming, you are just learning how to use specific pre-made chunks of code. In a professional setting that is supposed to make sense as you can rapidly throw together an application. However that application is bloated beyond all decency and plods along like a pregnant Hippo... I am a hobbyist. I take pride not in producing a final product but in doing things the 'right way', or the most optimal way or a way that uses some cleverness in the fundamental architecture of C++. If your going to use MFC or .NET and CLI then in my onion you might as well just use C#, or go the whole 9 yards and flop it out in visual basic!

Additionally it is all heading towards 100% 'managed code'. With the combination of the 'trusted computing' platform in modern EFI BIOS's and the CLI infrastructure we are just one step away from having to beg our corporate masters for the right to run our own programs on our own machines. Way back in 1999 people were starting to talk about getting licences to allow programmes to run - and hobbyists being granted the amazing privilege of a 'free' licence so long as they did not want to sell their code. This is on top of paying through the arse for the development environments themselves. Back then the idea was universally condemned. Now nearly 20 years later no one seems to care. THIS has already happened if you want to write device drivers. Your driver code has to be approved of by Microsoft and signed before it will run - unless you want to boot to some jury-rigged bullshit 'compatibility mode' every time you start up windows.

I really don't care about MS specifically. I am against corporate parochialism in any form, whether the shiny woo of Apple or the jack-boot thuggery of SCO. Even the supposed shining castle on the hill of Linux is not without its petty childishnesses.

That is why I have become so enamoured of perl. It takes all the supposed goodness from RAD, but makes it REAL without simultaneously stabbing you in the kidneys while you go to shake its hand. And best of all it is free like William Wallace AND Beer.