Quote Originally Posted by Athlon1600 View Post
Why not code in Visual Basic or Delphi where at least you know that EVERYONE would be able to use your software without any frameworks.
Have you actually tried coding meaningful applications with both VB and C# (or even VB.NET)? There is a world of difference. It's not worth discussing this further if you're not familiar with both.

Quote Originally Posted by Athlon1600 View Post
Who has .NET framework nowadays? I would say less than half and of those who have it - most have the wrong version!
Good question. Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 come with the .NET Framework already installed. For those still on Windows 2000 (me included) can add it add it. It's the way of the future. Plus a lot of applications are now provided over the Web. Quite a few of those are now in ASP.NET. The user doesn't need .NET to use a web site written in .NET. If a person keeps up with the Windows update they will always have the latest version of .NET that the underly operating system can support. The downloads happen in the background and you generally don't notice it until it's finished or when you want to shut down the machine.

Quote Originally Posted by Athlon1600 View Post
Whenever I download any of the software written in .Net, it's always buggy, slow and you can be sure that it will close with an unexpected error before you do something useful with it. So why use it??
Someone has already addressed the issue of buggy software...

Why use it? Well you don't have to use it. I've done programming from languages like Assembler all the way to C# with a lot of C/C++. I prefer C# all the way.

The final point to add which cannot be ignored is this. Microsoft has invested a lot in the Framework and there is a large and ever growing user community. Loads of forums, Loads of books, loads of tutorials, loads of good documentation. On top of that there free entry level tools that enable the developers to program against the framework and do some useful things (e.g. Visual C# Express, Visual Web Developer Express).

On another note you may also want to consider the job markets. I'm sure there is a lot of deman for Java applications and java programmers but there again if you know the .NET framework the opportunities are many. A lot of companies want to make sure that their applications are built on the best possible platform and can be supported going forwards. That is simply not the case with VB and similar languages. Don't get me wrong. Delphi is a good thing. It started out really well but I think since Anders Hejlsberg left Borland for Microsoft that language has not made much progress. At the moment C# and .NET Framework is where the evolution is. In the future it might be different. Until then I'll stick with C# and .NET framework.