Re:What the hell *is* .NET (Score 1)

I'm tempted to say 'all of the above'.

It really = concept + marketing + a programming framework + probably more.

I feel that programming in .Net is closer to my Unix roots because: it's all ASCII, you can compile outside Visual studio (SDK is free like free beer) and once you get the hang out of it, it's much easier to implement win32 stuff in e.g. VB than it ever used to be. So I'd say it's an improvement (especially since I always avoided VB before, I don't have to relearn it, I have a C++ background and well, my classes finally translate to VB (at least those w/o multiple inheritance)