Yeah, lol - I guess I mean that they were "considerably more true than I expected them to be, based on my previous prejudices about .NET"

Before I was forced to try it, if you had asked me whether having a "normal" development experience using .NET was possible I would have said "no way". After being forced to do it I was pleasantly surprised to see that it didn't feel particularly different to most other compiled languages that I've used. YMMV.