> If yes it seems this has not been a big showstopper to Windows apps

err what?? On what planet do you live? It must be a nice place :-)

COM components ( to encapsulate the abi )
DLL hell ( never heard of that? com registration)
STL ( taming the abi)
CORBA ( to talk between incompatible libraries)
VC6++, VC7++ incompatibilities


If you really want to torture a developer, these is the best toolset
you get. If you want to punish the user with crashing apps and
beautiful error messages ( stuff like: "Error msxml.dll not registered
by regsvr32" then go ahead.

.NET was already a success before the dotnet-sdk was downloadable.