No, absolutely, there are very cool things coming out of Microsoft with regards to C#/VC++. It's just that they nearly always come from Microsoft, there isn't an active community that does these things.
But take a look at a place like CodeProject. People post their projects and write up an article describing the technical aspects of that project. It's actually a surprisingly strong community. In the past month ~500 written or updated. I actually tend to find this place more interesting than GitHub or CodePlex, due to the exposition.