I can't say it strongly enough, but the ability to be one of the diminishing few with a high ability to understand, debug and fix, large Visual C++ codebases, w

I can't say it strongly enough, but the ability to be one of the diminishing few with a high ability to understand, debug and fix, large Visual C++ codebases, will likely provide you with a long career. Not all of it is going to be rewritten in .NET, and every year, more of the C++ guys die or retire, and more people quit for .NET, or something easier. Maintenance may be a dirty word in some circles, but for me it's more like an endless confusing puzzle, and stream of opportunities to make things better.