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<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>I think a lot of you are being short
sighted. Just my opinion.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>I lived through the mini-computer
era, using Digital Equipment mini-computers with RT-11 and VMS - both really
good operating systems, and thought at the time if they started selling VMS for
a few $100 rather than thousands they may have captured the mini-computer market
as it was way superior to MS-DOS, instead they didn't adapt and got clobbered by
Microsoft to the extent the company and the platform does not even exist
now.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Its a less certain thing as its still
the future, but its my guess likely in 5 years netbooks/laptops and mobile and
phone OS will largely kill desktop PCs and in time likely Windows too, as there
is not much sign they will be the leading candidate for mobile devices in 5
years. Hence the more cross platform and new UI (read touchscreen) enabled
a language is the better positioned it will be.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Also apps are moving more to be
web enabled, where the UI is done by the browser instead, so this also is not
really tied to one OS. There are only a few good frameworks that run
across many OS's - think Firefox/Thunderbird (XUL) and Safari/Itunes etc.
As far as I can gather none of these are remotely easy for new programmers to
jump into.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Thats why I reckon Delphi as a cross
platform simple UI language could be a killer, and why its worth doing even if
it is not too easy.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>John</DIV></BODY></HTML>