It is easy to criticize Microsoft. Heck, I've made a career of it. Yes, they are bullies and their technology tends to be derivative and uninspired, but what bothers most of Microsoft's competitors is none of that. Microsoft's competitors are bothered by Microsoft's success, which is to say by Microsoft's lack of a credible competitor. And that's one thing (maybe the only thing) that isn't Microsoft's fault. I am tired of people complaining about Bill Gates rather than beating him in the marketplace. Microsoft is about to win again in a part of the business where they have no business winning. I predict that Microsoft is about to beat the bejeezus out of Java. Java was to have been the Microsoft-killer, gold kryptonite to what passes for creativity in Redmond. Sun's cross-platform, write-once-run-anywhere language was going to free us all from the tyranny of Microsoft and Visual BASIC, but it simply hasn't happened. For this, I blame Sun and nobody else. Simply put, the hype in the programming community is steadily moving from Java to Microsoft's new Java competitor, C# (C-sharp). This shift is happening for a reason. When Java came to market five years ago, it was bulky, slow, and buggy. Today, five years later, Java is still bulky slow, and buggy. C#, while still in beta, already feels better than Java. Its performance is snappier. Java had an enormous head start that Sun simply frittered away. Now Java just plain feels old.