I was a Win32/COM/MFC developer at the time Microsoft announced .Net. The joke at the MS Dev Conference at the time was that everybody in the room just had their salary drop 20%.
Perhaps the only reason a shift in Win app development tooling isn't such a big deal today is simply that MS does not have the clout that they did back then. Windows 8? Seriously, it's many years off before anybody (including MS) going to try to make a profit on a shrinkwrapped app that doesn't run on Windows XP.
But there are nevertheless a great many developers who've hitched their wagon to MS as a career path. They're understandably antsy as they watch all the hot demand go for iPhone/Android/tablet development. This would explain a lot of the angst I think.
Perhaps the only reason a shift in Win app development tooling isn't such a big deal today is simply that MS does not have the clout that they did back then. Windows 8? Seriously, it's many years off before anybody (including MS) going to try to make a profit on a shrinkwrapped app that doesn't run on Windows XP.
But there are nevertheless a great many developers who've hitched their wagon to MS as a career path. They're understandably antsy as they watch all the hot demand go for iPhone/Android/tablet development. This would explain a lot of the angst I think.