As a person who works with MS frameworks let me answer you. First, despite your proclamation I've almost never felt left behind by Microsoft. Even as someone

As a person who works with MS frameworks let me answer you. First, despite your proclamation I've almost never felt left behind by Microsoft. Even as someone who has done WPF/Silverlight work, I actually find Windows8 and WinRT deeply comforting. It uses the languages I know. The main difference is it adds some new namespaces for me to use. I think people not familiar with WPF/SL think that those who know it now are left with a dead skill set, but the reality is that everything you know about it is still applicable. There are few technologies that MS has deprecated that I haven't generally been in violent agreement with. In fact, sitting here I can't think of any. There are several that I think they should have never introduced, but I find it hard to be upset with a company that tries things, some of which I think aren't necessarily the best, and moves on. I'm not sure if this "no plug-ins" idea is the best, from an end user perspective, but as a developer I'm perfectly happy with it. I've already started writing some Silverlight... I mean Xaml WinRT apps for Win8.