Quote Originally Posted by FunkyDexter View Post
[TakesModHatOffHopefullyForTheLastTimeThisWeek]

That would be .Net although I did think you were talking about VB6 when I wrote it. If you want me to come up with a metaphor for her in the context of Silverlight guy I'd say it was HTML5. While not actually an MS product they have invested pretty heavily in the standard and it does make Silverlight pretty much redundant. Not to mention that Silverlight guy probably also spotted JavaScript girl down a back alley way somewhere. She'd been around the block a few time but boy did she know how to please a man. MS could have continued to invest time and money into Silverlight but why bother? Silverlight guy can still go round to Silverlight's house for dinner (his application will continue to function) but he gets to dive into bed with the younger, sexier HTML5 or the deftly experience JavaScript when he fancies a bit of excitement. I think I've probably milked that metaphor as far as I can now.

The point is the MS didn't drop Silverlight for the heck of it. They dropped it because it didn't make sense to develop it further. Realistically t just wasn't offering us devs anything that we couldn't get better elsewhere. And Silverlight guy hasn't been abandoned. He can still roll out his app and it will continue to work for any user. And there's nothing to stop him bringing in other technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript either.

Perhaps future browsers may not support Silverlight but the major players are so far and, for the same reasons the VB6 runtime continues to be supported at least for now, Silverlight applications will probably have a pretty healthy shelf-life ahead of them too. Quite simply, it wouldn't pay a browser producer not to support it.

So now your Silverlight guy is faced with the choice of what he should do next. Should he abandon MS in a fit of pique and go elsewhere? Hell no. That would be unprofessional. What he should do is assess the world as it stands now and make his choice based on that.

I hope that answers where I'd stand on the likes of Silverlight being dropped so I'll touch on VB6 again now (it's what this thread was originally about after all) . You talked about return on investment. Do you not think MS have given you plenty of time to recoup your VB6 investment in the last decade? How long would be enough? I actually think MS has a pretty good track record of not just leaving it's developers out in the cold.
I think I want to meet this JavaScript Girl lol