They did.

"Getting Started with .NET Native" - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn600165%28v=vs.110...

Me too VS 6 and VB 6 were really awesome.

Microsoft was at the tipping point in 1999, then the dotNet thing happened and a lot of failures like dotNet based Shell/Explorer and WinFS for the failed Longhorn what turned into WinVista. Then the WinMobile 6.5 to 7 thing happened. The dotNet Framework seems to be legacy now - right? WinForms is legacy now. Silverlight is legacy. dotNet DirectX APIs are legacy. dotNetCore is the new thing, but in v1. UniversalApp based on C++ API seems to replace WinAPI - correct? Anyway WinAPI is still going strong, and almost all applications are WinAPI based.

Sometimes I would like to go back in time to 1998/99. But the good thing the WWW succeeded (and "The Microsoft Network" failed and original dotNet vision of software as a service got postponed by many years).

I'm not sure native is the way forward but I agree that Visual Studio is starting to show its warts. The 2GB memory limit is starting to be a problem for more and more of us. On a long enough timeline I hope to see VS code replace Visual studio

It's certainly slow at starting up, beyond that I haven't seen a problem.

Visual Studio is on WPF, so you can forget it. WPF is an abandoned platform. It is a wonder they're still trying though, even their web-based IDE (VS-code) is faster.