I had to like really think 10 times over, to comment or not, being a PHP dev....

Don't think that'll be an issue. Just sad to not see .NET Core finally get a UI layer added on. They're investing in ASP .NET Core its a nice back-end ecosystem.

I made this change back in 2011 when the Windows 8 developer preview with WinRT single-handedly annihilated all the WPF & Silverlight consulting work. The writing was on the wall for months, but for me the last straw was the JavaScript WinRT apps.

There is still work for COBOL developers. I don't think C/++/#/etc. work will be going away any time soon.

Office client never used .net or C# to begin with

Actually at one point they went very close to replace VBA with .net. It was called VSTA and meant to be a mini visual studio in office apps. I believe one of the office apps shipped with it in Office 2007, then they killed it.

VSTO, right?

Nope. VSTO actually shipped and is used to create office addins. VSTA was an embedded IDE.