How soon may I have to give up VB.net (and VB6)?

[Niya]

Yeah, if you're so old, you also remember all the predictions that Apple would off DOS, Linux would off Windows, SCSI (being clearly superior) would replace IDE, and so on.

Actually Linux has already won. However Linux vs Windows is an odd one. I think most Windows users would be extremely surprised at just how popular Linux really is. Linux is everywhere and I mean everywhere. The thing is though, Linux is like the Mafia. They're everywhere and you feel their influence all round you but you just don't see them. They run everything quietly from behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if this very forum was ran on a Linux server. Windows is front and center, out in the open. Windows isn't going anywhere anytime soon but if you believe nothing else, believe this, Linux will be around long after Windows is gone. This will probably not be in our lifetime though. Linux failed in one main category that prevents it from completely overtaking Windows which is that your Grandma and your secretary can't use it. Grandma can't be bothered to figure out a bunch of sudo commands but she can point and click easily enough.

IDE was replaced, just not by SCSI. The thing with some of these predictions is that a lot of people don't wait to see what is happening. SCSI came along and had a lot of advantages over IDE and a lot of people were quick to predict the demise of IDE but did they actually wait to see how it affected the landscape before making these predictions? It was the same with Betamax vs VHS and Zip disks. Remember Zip disks? Clearly superior to the 1.44 floppy but it didn't kill off the floppy. USB thumb drives did that much later.

I don't say what I say about VB.Net and C# lightly. I didn't just get up one morning and decided that VB.Net was doomed. I've been seeing signs of decline for years and Microsoft's sudden announcement that they were putting VB.Net in maintenance mode was the trumpet that sounded the alarm.

You also probably realize that the software to use hardware texture mappers existed before the hardware did, such that the change was organic for most people.

You don't think that there were people that still preferred software renderers? The ZDOOM port of the DOOM engine to this day still uses a software renderer despite a huge number of modern enhancements. The software renderer was kept because of similar of puritan ideals to the ones we see here on these forums in regards to older technology like VB6.

I'm just tired of people prophesying doom and trying to get people to jump ship because their view into the palantir convinced them what the future MUST bring.

I really don't get why this would upset anyone. It just seems like the natural course of progress.