From: John Beckett 

"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news::
> Thanks John, I think I've got it now.  That was helpful.

An additional point is that the .NET platform is potentially portable to
future systems (e.g. non-Intel based, etc). An amazing example of this, and
probably one unanticipated by Microsoft, is that a team is hoping to
implement enough of .NET on Linux so that a .NET program could run on
Windows or on Linux.

I can barely recall it now, but interestingly this whole system was once
invented by HP (I _think_ it was HP). It was an attempt to define a
programming environment where the programmer didn't need to worry about the
peculiarities of the architecture. ISTR it featured a CLR and JIT compiler.

However, the minicomputers on which the system was planned quickly became
obsolete, and newer systems raced ahead too fast for anyone to want the old
system.

John

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