Actually it used to be "IBM" instead of "Microsoft" as I'm sure you know. Currently, IBM provides the only platform I know of where you can still use the same stable, obsolete, six-weeks-for-a-hello-world development tools that you've been using singe the 80's.

You need to be realistic esposito. I've gone through more changes than I'd like to remember in my time and I'm not under the illusion that this will someday change. In the Wintel environment in particular, the only sure thing is rapid change. If you expect the tools generated during the earlier century to keep working in this century and beyond you can stop holding your breath. It's never going to happen.

If you think that Microsoft is the wrong horse or that Microsoft dev tools are the wrong bet, that's fine. There are other options available and you can use them. But an InvalidExpectation() exception should be thrown at you if you expect that Microsoft will not make drastic changes here and there every few years. The one thing you cannot do is adopt a Microsoft technology and hope that it will be evangelized forever with incremental and smooth updates going from version 1.0 through version 99.1, while everything in 1.0 keeps being supported.

Some changes may appear to be bad ones. I'm having trouble making up my mind about 8 myself, I guess we'll just see how it all plays out. Other changes may be good ones. If you remember some of my older posts, I understand the pain of VB developers when the whole VB6 train was thrown out in the cold. But VB6 did not have a wide enough or solid enough foundation to support a lot of things that are child's play with VB.Net. At some point, it had to go.

You may even get the impression that Microsoft is changing things so fast in order to keep everyone running like crazy just trying to play catch-up while they get the upper hand. Even if that's so, that's Microsoft. No point bickering about it.