>If you have a business with 10,000,000 in revenue, and investment choice that would either make 1,000 or lose 1,000 would not be material as far as the performance of your business is concerned.

Well, when I make $10mil a year I'll consider using VB.NET, until then, using the langauge that pays off now through:

1. More training oppurtunities
2. More online resources and samples
3. More advanced langauge features (unsafe code and others)
4. Roots in standards (wether industry like C/C++ or de facto like Java)
5. A standard itself
and finally
6. A cleaner, less wordy syntax

This would make a decent wikis topic.