Interesting Article on "Why .NET?"

Just a quick post before going on vacation... The DevXTra Editor's Blog has an interesting article with the title "Tech Ed 2008---Unifying Everything".  First, the article provides a very good and simple explanation on what Tech Ed has for developers versus the PDC that I'll expand on here:

Tech Ed covers technology that is available to developers now, allowing them to brush up on new technologies as well as deepen knowledge on technologies.

The PDC covers technology that is coming down the road.  Developers and Architects attend the PDC to understand the future of the Microsoft platform.  In past years, the PDC has unveiled Microsoft .NET, Windows^® XP, Windows Vista^®, and other significant milestones in the evolution of the Microsoft platform.

The DevXTra's blog post has a nice high-level discussion (i.e something you can share with a non-technical manager) on why .NET? or what is the value in the .NET platform?  I'm not going to be redundant by paraphrasing the blog post but here is a teaser:

"...all without having to learn a completely new environment or language." :-)