An Odd Take on C#'s "Struggle"

Calvin Austin has a very odd article C#: Is The Party Over? at the Java Developers Journal. The article's full of weird statements and flat-out innacuracies. Among the groaners: "The C#, C++, and C compilers are now free, although not obviously as optimized as the professional edition." Dude, they were always free, and there's not a gnat's heinie's difference in the professional edition of the compiler. Maybe Austin confused the IDE, but there was never a free version of it, so who knows where he was going. I think he's also nuts with his assertion that "The .NET platform has been under constant development, often too fast for many corporate users to adopt." What's tough about adopting the 1.x platform? The changes to 1.1 weren't that large of an impact, and the release of 2.0 three years later certainly isn't so troublesome. How many releases of Java have come out in the same timeframe? Some of the JVM releases managed to completely bust previously working browser apps I had -- and I"m talking about upgrading from releases like 1.4.02 to 1.4.05. Gimme a break. Dino Chelsea, the PM of the .NET group, rebuts in a great fashion. Michele Leroux Bustamante, vetran of plenty of work in both .NET and J2EE worlds, also has a few good thoughts.