Possibly the reason you hate VB.NET is that you, like most people who post here, are more consumed with how you solve the problem than solving the problem. One of the biggest issues with developers and projects is that we spend so damn much more time trying to decide what tools we should use than we do understanding the problem that we are (or should be) attempting to solve. I liken it to an old carpenter that I knew who always said that "Hell I can frame the wall with my hammer in the time it takes these kids to get their compressors setup, charged up, and the nail gun loaded". We, in my opinion, spend so much productive time attempting to come up with new, more elegant ways to do things. But as Dennis Miller used to say "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong"