Well, some of the readers of these pages will have noticed that, carefully speaking, my enthusiasm for Microsoft technology is pretty limited. “Limited” indeed is the right way of putting it: While I have a clear opinion about most of Microsofts monopoly regarding desktop and office software (which, in the end, makes me avoid both as good as I can, and thanks at the very least to Ubuntu GNU/Linux, right now I can do that pretty well… 😉 ), I then and now always considered Microsoft .NET, as a development and runtime platform, a pretty good thing, maybe the best technology the Redmond folks came up with to date, and definitely a technology that could have offer wholly new options to both Microsoft and the rest of the world if licensed and distributed a little more openly. Anyway, leaving licensing and personal considerations related to this aspect aside: These days I earn a living mainly off working with Java and overally am pleased with this as an environment. However, as “integration” is what I mostly deal with, I finally had the chance of dealing with Microsoft .NET and C#, and had a rather pleasant trip…