It's interesting how "idealist" sounds like a good thing and yet "ideological extremist" sounds like a bad thing. And yet, they are both probably the same thing

It's interesting how "idealist" sounds like a good thing and yet "ideological extremist" sounds like a bad thing. And yet, they are both probably the same thing. :) The abolishing of slavery was led by ideological extremists. Voting rights for women and blacks were led by ideological extremists. Child labor laws, environmental protection, social security, health reform, religious freedom, heck, arguably the founding of our country, etc. were all disproportionately brought about due to ideological extremists. I think having ideals and principles is a good thing. People who are anti-Microsoft "extremists" tend to be that way because they have ideals and principles, and they think they see Microsoft as having a certain track record against those ideals and principles, and therefore that's bad. There may or may not be good ideas in C# and .NET. But if we can have those good elements without having Microsoft, I bet that's what those folks would like. I'm definitely one of those folks. I had no issue writing software in Java in part because I had no expectation of Sun trying to say lock me into Solaris or a suite of Sun products -- something which Microsoft had a track record of doing in the past. Whether they would still do that with C#/.NET I could not know for sure at the time, but it was the smart bet to make.