LOL. Bryan, I'm not surprised you thought it was a joke. I started with Notes when Windows 3.1 came out 'revolutionizing' the PC. It's too bad because Notes was an incredible platform for rapid development. Its major downfall, IMO, was that the design was scattered all over the place and I wonder what would have happened if someone had the vision to sort things out a bit. Nevertheless, here we are almost twenty years later and it is still around. Still frustrating people by the sound of it. I remember developing with a colleague from our consulting firm, this was at Pfizer when they were still in trials for using Viagra for hair loss. Anyway, every five minutes we would turn to each other and say "Notes blows!". But it was a good gig, worked with great people.

Howard, thanks for your response. Except for Java, I have good skills in all the technologies you mention. I started poking around with CouchDb as well a couple of years ago as it seemed Notesish although it is really the back end only. Unfortunately, I am only able to do remote work at this time and I have been out of the workforce since, well... 2002. I think I'll do some reading on XPages and then decide whether to download the trial since it is only a 90 day license although I seem to recall that being said about the Notes trial download at one time but it wasn't actually enforced. Can I ask in what context you do development? Do you do applications or more like web sites? For public or private clients?

Many thanks!