Because there will be no more Win32 API use from Microsoft in the future.
Don't count on that! Most DOS and 16bit apps still run on Windows.
What I say is MS will not have new apps provide Win32 and COM APIs in the
future, but gradually all will move to just managed .NET APIs. NET interop
layer can automatically expose COM APIs from .NET ones, with not must cost
due to the extra layer, but using COM to talk to a .NET app will still incur
marshalling / unmarshalling of parameters etc. that are always costing in
speed
Just like Microsoft promissed that MFC is everything, yet I haven't
really seen Microsoft using MFC for all it's product development.
Then, lets look at the current. Microsoft promissed that the new
Office, SQL Server and Windows Vista will all be written in almast
100% .NET. Yeah! Windows Vista latest RC was analysed by some
company (another OSNews article) and found that over a 1000 different
apps included in Vista, only around 5 were .NET apps. Yes Microsoft,
we know you believe in your own products! Anybody heard of Microsoft
BOB - another next big thing 10 years ago? :-)
MS never promised the OS will be written in .NET unfortunately, I'm hoping
someday they will totally separate the OS core (why does the OS need to have
a GUI itself?) from OS shell and do write the whole shell GUI in .NET (don't
know what percent of it is in .NET - WinXP used a lot of JScript and HTML
instead btw).
SQL Server is too much of an investment in native code and I don't think it
will be ported in recent years, but latest version has CLR (Common Language
Runtime) integration and you can define datatypes in .NET, talk to them via
SQL as if they were native types of the database etc.
as for next Office, I think they use .NET for it (esp. the Office Live
version). MS and other companies are moving eventually to service-based
subscription-based online applications, with connectivity becoming something
ubiquitous (say with ADSL in Europe) in developed countries
========================
George Birbilis ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Microsoft MVP J# 2004-2006
Borland "Spirit of Delphi"
http://www.kagi.com/birbilis
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