Oh no, I've used that evil word "Microsoft". I wanna know what .net is. It pops up everywhere, but from what I've read, I don't have a clue what it is about or what it means, or what it includes.

So far as I know, it's a whole bunch of things. Here are the parts that come to mind:

1) Microsoft creates the Common Language Runtime and makes several languages all compile to run with the CLR: VisualBasic.NET, C#, etc. This is the basis of the Visual Studio.NET and .NET Framework stuff. At work we started to transfer our VB6 projects into VB.NET. For once I applaud Microsoft in that we're getting about a 6x speed increase.

2) Microsoft pushes XML into Web Services. Web Services are a lot of hoo-hah (spl?).

3) Combine web services with the .NET framework, and you supposedly get programming that traverses across the Internet.

Most of .NET is hype. There are several very good technologies in there, though.

- taubz

Well, there has to be something good about the .NET framework, seeing there are quite a bit of other programming languages that support it. To take an example, we have Perl and Python, which has apparently both been made in .NET versions.. Read more here if you wish:
http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Initiatives/NET/Research.html?_x=1

www.dotgnu.org is rather entertaining... (It's serious, I just find anything that foils a large companies' evil planning entertaining).

.NET isn't terribly original...I mean, CORBA/DCOP, X, NIS/LDAP, and NFS will get you the same result, only without paying money (well, you could but there are Free alternatives to the proprietary ones and the standards are all widely used and open).

dont know what .net is. but i sure as hell dont want to get caught in it! sorry