This field is in constant change. That doesn't mean you've lost anything in your investment. For consumers, the old stuff still runs. Microsoft has always (and still is) gone much further to maintain compatibility than any other software company. Hell, MFC applications are still being built and run today. I was doing MFC back in the early 90s, about 5 lifetimes ago in this field. So don't give me any of that crap about WPF/SL being obsolete. It's not. It's just no longer new and hot. If you care about being new and hot, you'll be changing tech every year. Sorry, that's the way the entire industry is. But YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE ON THAT BLEEDING EDGE. You can write your apps in Silverlight, WPF, WinForms, hell, even MFC, and be confident that Microsoft will continue to support you. I'm beyond sick of hearing about the death of ANYTHING, and the "blah blah, think of the customers and their puppies" is like fingernails on a blackboard. Your customers don't care what you use to develop the app. They may care about the changes in Win8, but that's not relevant to your app. Frankly, though, it's the power users that are usually the ones to * about this stuff, not your typical customer. If you feel that strongly (i.e. you're not going to put an ounce of thought into it, and instead be driven by emotion) than leave the damn platform already. Two years from now when you're making the same damn complaints about whatever platform you moved on to, I hope you realize how stupid you sounded.