D vs VM-based platforms

[lubosh]

Hi all,

I wonder what you all think about the future of programming platforms. I've got a lot of code written in C# and lately I started to read more about D.

Honestly, I feel quite refreshed to re-discover native compilation in D again. It seems so much more lightweight than .NET framework or Java. Why there's so much push on the market (Microsoft, Sun) for executing source code within virtual machines? Do we really need yet another layer between hardware and our code? What's your opinion? I wonder how much stir up would D cause if it would have nice and powerful standardized library and really good IDE (like VS.NET)