A career in C#? I doubt it. I ran over to monster.com and did a quick search for C#... got 1467 results. Not bad for a java rip off. However, C++ got 4170 results. Java got more than 5000 results. (It says "1 to 50 of more than 5000")

That makes sense for sure, length of use in the market being a large factor in the number of positions available. But I would guess that if you could roll back the hands of time to the mid-90's you could very easily substitute Java for C# in all that you are saying. I can remember the first time I encountered people doing server-side java (pre-servlets and such), and I laughed. They told me, you wait and see, and you know what, they were right. Java was billed as the lingua franca of the internet, we would all be using our Java applets to do everything from check our stocks to make breakfast, that marketing failed, but java lived on because it was an improvement over those that came before it. Progress marched on despite the fact that at one point it had every indication that it wouldnt.

Of course if you really want job security, learn SQL.

No way I can argue with that, knowing SQL and my way around some of the more popular DB packages has helped me get many a job.

I see C# as a passing fad.

I don't, but you are entitled to your opinion, only time will tell which one of us is right.

It was really hyped and then kindof sizzled out. Now there's a little sign of life but .NET has really failed IMHO. Probably because they really didn't make it clear as to what exactly it is.

I actually think you might be mistaking the real release of .NET with the BETA that came out a few years ago. M$ released a .NET Beta SDK about 2 years ago (i got a bunch of CDs in the mail at work cause of the magazines i subscribe too), and it was covered by the trade rags for a while then M$ went back to digest the feedback they had gotten, and it seemed to disappear. They now (in the last like 6 months) are back and are pushing it hard.

I also find it really amusing that you are really the only person pushing C#. Why?

I ammuse you, ... whattami a clown to you? eah! ;-P

No but seriously, if you are interested I will tell you. Recently my boss has been doing alot of new biz work, we are looking to "detach" ourselves from one of our major clients as they are becoming "difficult" to work with. We are a group of consultants and we specialize in small-medium intranet/internet work, alot of what we do it LAMP oriented, but if the client says use M$ or Java or something else, then we do it. Our focus is solving the problem and not pushing/evangalizing a particular way to solve it. I myself am a full-time Perl developer (apache, mod_perl, MySQL/PostgreSQL on some kind of Unix), but I am also the senior developer here, so I occasionally have to do code reviews and sometimes even write stuff in other languages. It is important for me to have at least some knowledge of all the stuff we use or might use. Which brings me to C#.

On my bosses recent "new biz" adventures he found alot of interest in C# and .NET experience. It actually shocked us, because we thought like you did, that it was going/gone the way of the Dodo. But it seems that alot of companies are looking into it for upgrading older ASP based intranets. So I was charged with looking into C# and seeing if it was something we want to get ourselves into. I grumbled for a few days, installed ROTOR, then installed DotGNU, and finally Mono (I work on OS X and pretty much refuse to use a Windows box for anything other than testing). I bought C# in a nutshell and started messing around.

I was very impressed by C# and the CLR. Far more than I ever expected to be as well. Now, programming langauges are my hobby, I read books on them for fun (yes, its sick I know). I know at least 5 languages fluently, and another 5 pretty well, and then probably another 10 on top of that I am familiar enough with to be able to read and (mostly) understand code written in it (maybe with the help of a reference book). So I feel I am pretty competent to judge how good or bad a language is (of course you have the right to disagree with me on all these points of you like).

Much of the base concepts behind the CLR are sound concepts. The idea of managed execution got its start back as early the 60s with things like LISP interpreters and VM/CMS (mainframe OS based on the concept of Virtual Machines) and evolved with the JVM. The idea of the IL (intermediate language) assembly language that all .NET languages compile down too, is not that far from GCC and its intermediate langauge it uses before it compiles native code. The idea of keeping meta-data around after compilation (which the CLR does) is really just RTTI taken to a new level to support things like class reflection and not just type information. The CLR combines these and takes it a step further.

C# (IMO) is the "next step" from Java, which was itself a "next step" from C++/Smalltalk, which were evolutions of things like Simula, CLU, Ada and the Modulas. Progress marching on, you see what I mean? If already laid out what i see as C#'s improvements over Java to flyingmoose in here if you care to read it.

Not everything thats comes out of Redmond is badly designed and inefficient (just the OSes). The people behind .NET, C# and ILasm are some very very smart and talented people, just because their paychecks are signed by Satan himself does not change that. And remember, Java would not be where it is (more than 5000 posts on monster.com) if it wasnt for the marketing hype that Sun dumped on it. It was dead in the water for a while, now you can't spit without hitting it. M$ has a lot of money invested in .NET and even more in their marketing budget, don't count it out quite yet.

But hey, in the end the OP has to make his/her own decision. I am just throwing in my 2 cents.

-stvn