Author's profile: (Microsoft Contributor) "Peter Bright dropped out of university (after about five minutes) to work as a software developer writing C++ and C#."
After reading that article I propose that he must have also spent another 5 minutes programming before deciding on his new career path of writing sensational crap.
Nice flamebait, though.
He still makes some absurd claims though:
"... they were told that all their experience, all their knowledge, and every program they have written in the past would be useless on Windows 8"
Flamebait. FUD. Just look at the comments there.
Perhaps the only reason a shift in Win app development tooling isn't such a big deal today is simply that MS does not have the clout that they did back then. Windows 8? Seriously, it's many years off before anybody (including MS) going to try to make a profit on a shrinkwrapped app that doesn't run on Windows XP.
But there are nevertheless a great many developers who've hitched their wagon to MS as a career path. They're understandably antsy as they watch all the hot demand go for iPhone/Android/tablet development. This would explain a lot of the angst I think.
I imagine we'll see other ways to build into the tablet UI apart from html5/js.