Windows Vista includes the .NET Framework runtime but doesn't seem to use it for most of its applications, which is what I was expecting, but is still quite odd. As many Microsoft critics keep saying, "if they are not using .NET for their own applications, why should we?"

What is more surprising in Vista, though, is that the Desktop Gadgets (like the big clock you get by default) are not based on the .NET technology, as I was told a couple of years ago, if I remember well. Instead, they are HTML-based and use JavaScript for programming the gadget object model. The desktop use IE7 to display the gadgets. This is the same model used by Google for its own Gadgets.

Even more, Microsoft recently released the first community technology preview (CTP) of WPF/E, Windows Presentation Foundation for Everywhere. The technology is meant to take XAML and WPF to any browser or any operating system, and not only IE7 on Vista. However, at least for now, you program the object model in JavaScript (with a native .NET version expected next year, but originally promised from the start). Certainly, JavaScript is currently more portable than IL (the .NET Intermediate Language), but I'm not sure I get the point... unless AJAX is really taking over so much that Microsoft is shifting its priorities for developers.

Finally (on a different .NET-related topic), Nick Hodges (no I didn't know your 5 things) has reopened the debate of why the Delphi IDE needs .NET. Steve Trefethen discussed it 2 years ago, suggesting the only reason the Delphi Win32 IDE needs it is for the .NET CodeDOM that the refactoring technology uses. Even Allen Bauer, in the following discussion, partially disagrees. I think Borland should have enough code parsing technology to avoid this dependency, that makes little sense for Turbo Delphi for Win32. If you look at the BDS ToolsAPI you'll notice that most of the internal code sits exclusively on the Win32 side of the IDE.