Paul Vick on cycling strategies (and programming languages)

I’ve written before about my expectations for the divergence of VB.NET and C# given their different target audiences. Paul Vick takes a view from a slightly different angle about the benefits to Microsoft of having the different language teams.

Now it could be argued that if there was only one true language then the people from the different teams could still (and would have to) innovate all into this common language. First, given their disparate goals, this seems a little unlikely to work. Second, while I have my own preferences for the language I use, I like that our platform is broad enough to support people with different views and backgrounds without forcing them to conform to any single standard.