One problem is lack of simple examples. There is no such thing as a super simple .net prog.
At a minimum, you must set up VS or whatever compiler to use the right references, and debug settings (loadlock thing).
Getting over that first hump, and understanding the minimum to replicate that from scratch, takes more than in the past.
I do think the adesk labs and these forums do a good job of helping, its just that people are expecting the future to be easier than the past. IMO, the .net API is much harder than activex. There is no nice help file for the .nat api like with vba. The SDK help files do not seem to answer my questions, mine are usually very simple.
Once we get lots of examples going, I think people will pick it up. I think the difficulty is balanced out by the fact that you only need one language to do decent apps, not like lisp and VBA, where you need objectdcl or a lisp to define the command function to run tha vba. .net is self contained.
Part of the reason I posted the ChLayColt project was to get people going on the patterns of common use.