Welcome to my new column on the Borland Developer Network, "Caught in the .NET".

My name is Alain "Lino" Tadros and I have been developing software using Borland tools for over a decade.  I am the President and CEO of Falafel Software Inc., a consulting and training company in the heart of the Silicon Valley

I worked for Borland as a Software Engineer for many years on the Delphi and C++Builder product lines.

I was honored at Borcon 2002 with the prestigious "Trainer of the year" award and my previous company was honored with the "Solution Partner of the year" award.

These series of articles that I am starting are aimed at Borland Developers that desire a strong knowledge about the inside scoop of the .NET Framework from Microsoft.

Bare in mind that I utilize Borland and Microsoft's development tools heavily in my day to day consulting and training and my goal is to help you get the information, facts, code, tips and tricks about .NET as fast as possible and as easy as possible.  I hope you will mark this page as one of your favorites in your browser and visit here regularly to read more and more about this great technology.

Few words are in order here to start the .NET journey:

1. .NET is VERY GOOD
2. .NET is VERY FAST
3. .NET is VERY ELEGANT

I know, I know, a lot of you are saying, what?!?!?  How come? Are you sure you are talking about a Microsoft technology?

Keep reading here twice a month and you will probably agree with me little by little that we, developers, have just received in February 2002 a Christmas gift from Microsoft for few years to come.

Yes, you are right! I am a big believer in .NET. Nothing is perfect but this is a treat for Delphi developers.

The whole .NET phenomenon made me feel like a bunch of Americans and one British went to live in Hong Kong and all decided to start driving a car for their day to day activities, the Americans took a long time to get used to driving on the right side of the road but the British felt right at home. The British had the edge.  If you are a Delphi Developer, you are British driving a car in Hong Kong. If you are C++ or Java developer, it will take some getting used to, for you to feel comfortable driving around.  If you are VB developer, I recommend a Taxi :)

The articles that I would like to cover in the next few weeks will consist of:

• What is the CLR? And how does it work?
• What is the CTS? How important is unified Type systems?
• What is IL and how is it different from Assembly?
• IL is Compiled, only ONE linker to do the job for everyone.
• Delphi Vs C# Vs Visual Basic Vs VC++ in the .NET arena
• Reflection, Run Time Type Information, WOW!
• Remoting, Bye Bye DCOM
• Globalization, built in? Oui!
• Component Writing in .NET
• Design time functionality for Components
• ASP.NET, Fly baby Fly!

Thank you for your time and write to you soon.

About Falafel Software Inc:
Falafel Software is all about making the most of software development technology in order to complete the project on time and on budget with best possible user experience. Falafel Software offers a comprehensive suite of software development solutions ranging from strategy to design to implementation that businesses need in order to realize high returns on their investment.
www.falafelsoft.com

Copyright ) 2003 Alain Tadros, Falafel Software Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS DOCUMENT CAN BE COPIED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESS, WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR.