>But there's internal competition and pride driving that at Microsoft more likely than what's best for customers <g>...

I think you have to look at the alternatives before you can admit that this is a bad thing. What would be advantage of the CLR over its competitors if it supported two languages (ignoring the other umpteen+ it really supports) where the only difference between them were simple syntax things?

But what does worry me is if a feature is added to VB.NET and in the next rev, C# gets it, if they are different implementations they might be in subtle, and annoying ways.