.NET visits Aston. Not expected to return.

Well, just got back from a .NET and C# presentation at the Uni, which was a bit fun. I get the distinct impression that there's a bit of a long-standing debate going on within the CS department concerning .NET vs Java, and I'm not entirely sure that this presentation wasn't just another move in that little conflict.

A good, informative lecture nonetheless, I learnt a couple of sweet new features I hadn't seen before in CLR, such as Delegates and Events (thank God! I've wanted them for so long), and even managed to teach the guy running the presentation something new - he told the entire room that you couldn't convert back from a null Object to an int...course you can, just has to be a nullable :)

I did try and convince the CS staff at the end of the lecture that we'd really, really like a .NET module please, as a final year option, but given that the guy overall in charge's first question after the seminar started with "This was just a Microsoft 'oh look how great is our product' java bashing course you went on, therefore..." - I'm not hopeful. Ah well, students don't really matter much in Universities do they, it's all about the commercial research.