>You attempted to explain this comment to Pertti about what you meant about 'beginners' - After spending many hours with a windows presentation foundation book and playing their examples (all handcoded), I'm not sure your comment about beginners only listening to someone else and forming an opinion is applicable. Please explain.

it take 4-8 months of work to become proficient and understand the power of wpf/silverlight. You can't do it reading a book, you have to work with it and through the pain points until your proficient. any less than this and you can't make an informed opinion. It is a COMPLETE paradigm shift in thinking and unless you make that shift you can't understand what it is your railing against.