Girish Bharadwaj posted some thoughtful comments concerning my posting C# Language Bigotry? No, Calculated Business Sense. I wanted to clarify some misconstuerage.
Girish mentioned Java as an alive and kicking language, something I've posted about before. I was thinking about mentioning that myself, but did not because I was focusing on the .NET stack. Why? The reason is that not only am I a technology architect at my company, I'm the .NET technology architect. We also have a Java architect with whom I get along famously. I am encouraged by a little language feature competition. I am not a “true believer” when it comes to language/platform and have recommended Java and worked with both J2EE and Axis myself in the past. However, when it comes to the .NET stack, everyone knows that Microsoft itself is committed to writing its core libraries in C# and links it very closely with the CLI. It is the scion of the runtime.
I am sad that Jay Kimble took offense at my preference of C# for core language development within my own organization. I was not intending that this ought to be the choice for all development organizations or that every developer ought to be a C# developer. Neither do I have the intention to push C# as the “true language” at my company. There are several pragmatic reasons and some strategic reasons to write a piece of software in VB.NET. I also feel that there are many excellent programmers who primarily write their code in VB.NET. You can write a .NET assembly with just as high a quality in VB.NET as you can in C#, no question. However, as I said, in my position, I need to take a long-range portfolio-driven approach to the code base, especially as it relates to long-lived, reusable, oft-referenced, and oft-maintained code. I feel the safer decision is to put my money where MS has put theirs for Framework code — and that would be squarely in the lap of C#.