(Backdated Post: 25/08/2000)
Being April 1st, it is appropriate for this post.
In late 2000 when the Microsoft world was going crazy on announcement .NET, it was .NET everything everywhere. Within the Microsoft user groups at that time, the joke used to be, anyone trespassing any Microsoft building in Redmond will be renamed as *.NET. So I would be called Venkat.NET if I was spotted by a Microsoft Product manager.
In this background during Microsoft Tech Ed 2000 India, in the organizing team we had to manage a 15 minute empty slot in the schedule. We couldn’t leave it free. We needed all the attendees to be in one hall, so that we could get the main hall ready without hindrance. And that was slot I used unravel for the first and only time anywhere in the world – Microsoft DOS.NET, the DOS operating system being upgraded beyond anyone’s imagination.
Doing this session was fun, everyone enjoyed, yes the audience too like the spoof and laughed at it. It’s a different story that many years after this session Microsoft did re-architect and reimagine the humble command line to integrate with .NET when they released PowerShell.