researching c#

i wont to know why the language is not popular among college students at all. Because college students are often more concerned about political views than real world problem solving. :-) Most professors I've had are like this too, very anti-Microsoft; this is due to Microsoft being the richest, most powerful software corporation in the world (i.e. the bad guy) All the little guys bash the big guy, resulting in kids (hacker community, college CS people, Slashdot, etc.) and rival corporations that hate Microsoft with a vengence. 2. is it necessary that we know the program. C# is not a program, it's a language. And .NET is not a program either, it's a framework or platform to code against. .NET is unique in one area - for the first time ever, developers can write in an entire host of popular languages (C#, C++, VB, even Java and JScript) and use the same functionality (i.e. the .NET framework class library), ~basically~ making all languages equally powerful. Try not to think of C# as something necessary to learn; really, C# is just a different syntax of using the .NET framework class library; it is the library you need to be concerned about learning. Is it necessary? Yes, IMO it is. If you are going to be doing any kind of development for the Windows platforms, it will be absolutely necessary to learn some managed code. Even in you are doing Unix development, there has been talk that Novell's implementation of .NET, called Mono (go-mono.org), will be a major language on some of the Linux platforms in the coming years. Should that be the case, C# would be prevalent in both the Windows and Unix worlds. . what do we stand to gain from understand the language better. You gain experience as a developer writing applications for the most widely used operating system in the world. You create for yourself a knowledge of a portable framework for writing modern-day applications. Additionally, the .NET framework contains an almost never-ending wealth of information readily available if you are willing to learn.