I assumed that XAML was the silverlight team (why duplicate effort) and if silverligth is gone how much core knowledge stays in XAML?

Personally I stuck to C++ and moved MFC->wx->Qt !

.Net is interesting for the way it allows things like Ironpython and F# in as first class languages and wpf is fun to play with, but if you can't write something like Office or photoshop in it then it's just a toy.