I've been out of the industry too long and I'm confused. I thought C# was one of a number of languages built on the "Microsoft .NET Framework" managed code programming model. Yet people use the term ".NET" as if it was the name of a language.
Also: technically, isn't ANYTHING that's not system programming considered to be applications programming? Because it seems that nowadays people reserve the term "applications programming" for applications that don't run on the net (either server- or client-side)(although they do sometimes speak of web apps).
The reason I ask is that web- and non-web-programming seem to be such different environments, and I need this information to help me decide in what field to try to break back into programming.
Can anybody straighten me out? Thanks for whatever help you can give me.