I agree with what you are saying, but there is a little issue. I mainly develop in Java, Visual Basic 6 and Visual Studio 2008. I test my applications on Windows XP/2000. Java Runtime Environment, required for my Java applications runs well on Windows XP/2000. My Visual Basic 6 applications also run great on Windows XP/2000. But .NET Framework 3.5 (which is required for applications created in Visual Studio 2008) doesn't run on Windows 2000 (however it runs on Windows XP). So, if someone will have to distribute a .NET 3.5 application, there will be a special requirement: only for Windows XP and later, which is not a good thing.

However, I am sure I will use Visual Studio 2008, Visual Basic 6 and Java for a very long time and I find great advantages in all mentioned platforms.