Since it's very beginning, .NET has been a dominate player in the market place. Within a couple years, Microsoft was able to leverage it's unique position and assert .NET as a power house. For many of us it's lead to great personal growth and opened new opportunities. Job positions are plentiful (CNN named .NET one of the top 5 "
Big demand, big pay" jobs) and industry growth continues at an amazing pace.
What's really impressive is that all this has happened with only partial support from Microsoft. It's been hard for desktop applications written in .NET to gain the same traction as, say, ASP.NET applications - simply because you can't rely on the .NET framework to be installed on the user's PC.
With the eminent release of the .NET Framework 3.0 on Vista and XP, .NET is going to go through an insane surge that will make it's initial release seem timid. We aren't just talking about migrations either. The rich multimedia capabilities of the .NET Framework 3.0 coupled with the vast market penetration of XP and Vista is going to result in the emergence of completely new markets. It'll be like Web 2.0 for the desktop - except for real.
CNN thought .NET programmers were in demand before? I'm glad I don't work in HR.
If you're actually enthusiastic about programming and want to be on the cutting edge,
download the CTPs today and start playing around. As best as I can tell, Microsoft is throwing it's entire weight behind this. Microsoft is basically saying "This is where Windows programming is going" and where Windows programming goes, so too does the money.