In terms of features it's actually Flash's rich cousin because Silverlight is multi-language (C#, Python, etc) and multi-threaded among many other features.
Do you actually think that HTML, CSS and Javascript are good technologies to build applications on top of compared to something like Silverlight, which is purpose-built for the task?
But flash was already dying at the time. Flash has "died" because web applications had gotten more powerful.
"Do you actually think that HTML, CSS and Javascript are good technologies to build applications on top" Are you serious? I am not saying "the web" is perfect, but this just nonsense.
For native apps? Yes, I think web tech sucks immensely compared to Silverlight.
Unfortunately, the XAML everywhere people lost at Microsoft, so we're stuck with half-baked, kludgy and limited solutions like atom/electron/node-webkit for building cross platform desktop apps. XAML everywhere (Silverlight) is so much more precise and it's compiled. I would have preferred that they continued developing Silverlight at least as a means of building cross platform desktop apps, but I understand why they don't want to expend the energy.
Do you actually think that HTML, CSS and Javascript are good technologies to build applications on top of compared to something like Silverlight, which is purpose-built for the task?