Strong typing - All modern programming languages are strongly typed because it allows you to find the majority of your bugs at compile time rather than run time. This is critical in today's market. You can create stable applications (read: less bugs) more quickly in strongly typed languages than weakly typed languages. If you haven't tried it, I recommend checking it out--it is phenomenal.
This might be the biggest mistake in history. Strong typing as you mean here (there is much to say about the definitions) is going to lose popularity in the near future. Modern languages like Python show you why. Strong typing was a good idea in the old days where ultimate speed by efficient use of datatype mappings were essential and compile time checking was most welcome, but today this rule does not apply to most applications anymore. In fact I'd call strong typing one of the most stupid arguments in decision making of software development tools.
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A Single Learning Curve - Once you climb the .NET learning curve, you can use what you've learned to create Windows Applications, Web Applications, Smart Device Applications, and with SQL Server 2005, stored procedures. > >
Advanced object-orientation - VFP has implementation inheritance, VB6 has interface inheritance, but .NET languages have both. The lack of either of these is a real shortcoming (although it's better to have implementation inheritance). Other key features are overloaded methods, static/shared members, abstract classes, operator overloading, and the ability to create your own custom events. If you haven't had the opportunity to understand and use these features, I highly recommend checking them out. They are additional tools that help create more stable, maintainable applications.
I've learned overloading more than one and a half decade ago, but its really related to strong typing and really are ment to bypass the difficulties encountered in strong typing languages. They gennerally hinder application development speed.
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Visual Studio - The current VS .NET 2003 is a great tool. I've had many Java developers who have taken my training classes tell me that Visual Studio is better by far than most Java tools they have used. Visual Studio 2005 takes this a quantum leap further with great features such as a built-in class designer, collaborative developer tools, source control, object test bench, unit testing, enforcement of coding standards, and so on.
Unfortunately, it is not what is better. It is what is used most, else we would be programming on the OS2 platform today.
