VS.NET development (Score 1)

I agree that developing with .NET sounds great for VB programmers (myself having been one of them - notice here the past tense) because of the CLR. My concern is that the lure of the CLR and the speed of development using VS.NET may come with a price. If your main objective is to develop web services and quickly deploy Microsoft injected apps, then great. If you are using VS.NET because you want to put your current programming language on steroids (whether it be VB or other) then like myself... I'm a little wary. Aside from having to maintain and debug code that has been segmented with a variety of syntax (because hey... you know as well as I do that it's not easy to go through someone else's work), there are some other important issues to consider. Performance... there really is a hit here because Microsoft is trying to automate memory management in VS.NET to make it easier for apps to be pumped out with success. Did people request this?? I wasn't one of them. Microsoft specific... are the fruits of my efforts going to be enslaved by what Microsoft does? Will Microsoft realize the impact their changes have on the general population of developers? While software development is driven by the market to become platform independent (and believe me, this is the case)... does VS.NET move me in the right direction? I've got quite a few more... but these are the two that concern me the most. I've seen the beta 1, and I think it's great... but not without my concerns.