I don't think it's really about criticizing MS for putting out new stuff-- I think .NET developers are trying to read the tea leaves about the future of .NET in

I don't think it's really about criticizing MS for putting out new stuff-- I think .NET developers are trying to read the tea leaves about the future of .NET in general and WPF specifically, to figure out which of the new stuff to use. WPF is still new to a lot of developers. A lot of .NET shops are slow to change. My two .NET gigs have been enterprisey, line-of-business-type apps. What the whole Metro thing is going to mean for line of business apps is hard to say. WPF might continue to be the choice for things like that. I have a hard time picturing a Metro-style data entry screen, but I haven't really looked that closely at Metro. I've been figuring that it's kind of like PhoneGap for the desktop, which may be a completely mistaken assumption. Even if Metro replaces WPF universally as the preferred way of creating Windows desktop apps, I agree that the need for desktop apps in the first place is diminishing. Prior to the big Windows 8 announcement, it was pretty clear that WPF was a high priority for Microsoft and, a pretty safe bet in terms of skills to learn. That's not the case anymore, and even if Windows 8 and/or Metro fail with consumers, the shift in resources for things like Visual Studio, etc. will could really hurt WPF (which needs better development tools pretty badly, based on my experience). That could hasten its demise and possibly .NET's as well.