why DID microsoft make .NET? like, the benefit of a VM is portability so why make a VM and then be like "... and it will only run on x86 windows computers! :3"
i guess so that they could have multiple languages all target the same common language runtime and interop easily?
Yes: Microsoft licensed Java from Sun and wrote J++ -- a Java implementation with several Microsoft specific extensions. Sun objected and sued, out of concern that customers would use the extensions, locking them into the Microsoft implementation and platform. I can't say that I've ever really understood Sun's lawsuit, but the courts seemed to agree with them.
So Microsoft could no longer implement their own Java.
Microsoft was a well known language company before MS-DOS and Windows. I heard that they reassigned their people who had implemented J++ to create C# and .Net, which I would describe as a Java clone, with some of the more obvious design problems of Java fixed. Then, over time, Microsoft expanded and extended .Net extensively.
Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)
Elthas
Jeff Grigg