More on the TaskVision sample.
It is an odd sample. The auto-updating feature is seemingly independent of .NETisms. It would appear there is a stub program which launches the real program - and the stub program stays alive while the 'real one' is running. Meanwhile, said stub looks for a bit of xml on the internet and if said xml says hey I've got a new version downloads it to a *new* directory (it can't overwrite a running program) and runs that next time - it also has a method the real program can call back on periodically and say have you got new, in which case it asks the user if they'd like to switch. Presumably, it then closes down and the stub launches the new. There is absolutely nothing here that couldn't be done without .NET, indeed, I think Wise and Installshield provide such services. Which just goes to show that all .NET is a set of new languages and redone libraries - WinForms doesn't really provide anything new (?) whereas ASP.NET really does seem to provide something new/extended over the old ASP. The question is then, is writing programs easier with .NET than with VB/C++? Do you get less buggy, more 'secure' programs (which was always a claim for Java)?
posted at: 3:07:41 PM 
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