Appatic

Incredible but true. It is been already a decade from that PDC 2000 where Microsoft first unveiled the .NET framework. At that time i already had one decade following Microsoft with a particular interest as i also followed tech news among many other things. What i remember about that time is that originally as with many of the early 2000’s Microsoft demos. It was way way overreaching and too ambitious for their own good.

The reason for the grandiosity (now remembered as a bit delusional) of the original .NET demos and speeches where because at the same time a now not really that well remembered failed project called Hailstorm was also brewing. And so were the concepts for what later would be the legendary, innovative and infamous Longhorn demos. In short: Microsoft vision back then was too far ahead of what was actually even remotely possible.

But that said, 10 years later and now with .NET 4.0  and all the things it encompasses ,its little brother Silverlight 4 and Novell’s Miguel De Icaza Mono Project. .NET has managed to reach the goals that it set for 7 years ago. Sure, it only took 7 years longer than originally projected. But so did what we were originally promised in the Longhorn demos.  Not really anyone’s fault as the hardware and internet infrastructure for them to be what they are now didn’t even had reached mainstream availability 3 years ago or didn’t existed at all 7 years ago.

As i am aware that for those not familiar with .NET history, i am talking in riddles. I think all of those interested in this milestone should read about it in full detail from a actual developer that was in the front stage of it at the time. Jim Payne got such a recollection in a post at the Redmond Developer News site. It is a great read, so please go have a look.

Happy Birthday .NET Framework! 

Now the question is how the next 10 years of .NET will be. But with the propagation of .NET tech into more and more mobiles and more and more devices via Silverlight and XNA. Plus Miguel De Icaza extending the reach of it beyond Microsoft itself via Mono Project. There should be no doubt that its future is quite bright.

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