why DID microsoft make .NET? like, the benefit of a VM is portability so why make a VM and then be like "... and it will only run on x86 windows computers! :3"

i guess so that they could have multiple languages all target the same common language runtime and interop easily?

@eniko the VM was never about portability, only about managed memory. The possible portability was a fig leaf they could use against their main competition (Java) while never delivering on it (kind of like BSky and decentralisation). It was never intended to run on other OS’s never mind architectures (Mono forced their hand on the former)
@eniko it fits Microsoft’s whole strategy in that era, when they considered open source / open standards an existential threat. They would submit things to standards bodies that made it look like they were being open while in practice hobbling everything so it only ran on Windows. Docx, .Net and C# were officially standards, but were impractical to use outside Windows because you needed the proprietary parts to build most projects.