This is a big, big deal, yet Microsoft continues to vacilate on this issue. I hear Microsoft execs stand up and proclaim that everything is .NET. Then I see product teams create products without the slightest nod to .NET, using a patchwork of unmanaged code and interfaces dating back to the (early) COM days.

I have heard people walking around Microsoft conferences saying out loud that .NET is dead. I have heard people walking around Microsoft conferences saying .NET 3.0 is the coolest thing ever. I have heard fence-sitting Corporate VPs at Microsoft proclaim that there’s a place for managed code and a place for unmanged code, that they love managed code but unmanaged code is “not going away any time soon — maybe ever.”

These Zen-like utterances are not followed up by any guidance as to where Microsoft (the whole company) thinks managed code is appropriate and where it’s inappropriate — and I fear that’s because they don’t know (yes, I mean that literally — as a company, if the disagreements go so deep that they can’t articulate a single clear position to the outside world, that means they don’t know).

And you are completely correct — there’s no doubt that “Microsoft” (i.e., some part of Microsoft) will proclaim that Windows has a “fully managed API” and it will have some witty name. But that doesn’t make it true.