>Problem was, MS was churning out the "next great thing" >faster than I could learn the last great thing.

Same here. I design databases, and MS kept bringing new data access methods every three years; I never could wrap my head around the ADO/DAO difference, but that did not matter for long because both were replaced by .Net

I sincerely wondered if this was not a deliberate tactic by Microsoft : while developpers are busy learning their newest "next great thing", they can't invest time in anything else.

Meanwhile I learned how to use an OSS lamp stack and have been happily using it for the last 10 years. Very stable and reliable, I could not be happier.