Re: 'The .NET Framework and C# language were a hit with developers'
.NET's not bad for the one large project I've used it on. I'm not thrilled with the tooling (i.e. Visual Studio - but then I am not a fan of IDEs), but the Framework has a decent feature set of basic infrastructure classes, generics, and the like; the managed environment catches a lot of mistakes; the JITting system generally works pretty well; system functionality like AppDomains and GC control is mostly clean; the code-signing mechanism is easy to use.
I wouldn't try to port a lot of legacy code to it, except in an environment where that can be done with minimal changes (like, say, if I had a bunch of CICS COBOL apps I wanted to run under .NET). But for new development I've seen much worse environments.
I still do more work in C than anything else. I like C (which is more than I can say for C++, a language which seems to exceed nearly everyone's ability to write readable, maintainable code). But I like C largely because I generally work with clean, tidy, well-designed C code written by someone who knows the spec (me). If I had to work with a bunch of inferior developers, I'd much rather work in a managed environment that'd catch much of their crap for me, and make refactoring easier.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
