Java was no better than C++. The very thing that helped it become top dog in the programming world (run anywhere ) meant that Java GUIs (Swing, AWT) inevitably suffered from poor performance; they were adequate but not great. VB and Delphi both had the advantage of a single platform base to work on and Microsoft did a good job.
So C# has the same advantage as VB/Delphi- a single platform to work on (plus the independently developed Project Mono in the Linux world). There are many places that run mixed language applications with Delphi/VB on the front end and C++ or Java on the back. Also there are mixed platforms, Windows on the front and Linux on the Unix networked server. With C# you can replace both client and server.
With the launch of Microsoft Vista, a new programming model for Windows applications was introduced though as yet it hasn't set the world on fire even now that it runs on XP. This is WPF, the Microsoft technology that uses the DirectX libraries (instead of Windows GDI+) to render controls. It's Microsoft playing catchup with Apple by trying to escape the gray boxes of Windows GUIs for colorful, animated, media rich visuals. We'll see that in future tutorials but this one is firmly in the gray boxes of WinForms.
On the next page : The First Application
