Jon's .NET reality check post raises a bunch of interesting questions. Of course, I like to take this further and look back at how many times we have promised in the past (for example "easier deployment" has been a battle cry for almost a decade - MSI anyone?)

I'd like to comment on a few of Jon's questions...

Unified programming model: I beleive Longhorn shows the direction we are going in clearly here. After .NET 1.0, we have released Managed DirectX for example. Whidbey takes this further, and in Longhorn we have the model that all new functionality must be exposed via managed APIs.

Programming language neutrality: I can only comment on what I see, and in my team alone we write components in C# and C++, and often test/demo/use components that derive from these in VB. I believe here we did make huge progress. I'd like to hear if other people are seeing the same thing in their dev shops.

... I could go on, but I guess I really agree with Jon's approach. We should validate that .NET is delivering on the promise (I think it is), and we should use that to help plan our future direction.