Silverlight was essentially a polyfill for back when browsers weren&#x27;t very capable. I did a ton of work with Silverlight - streaming video, vector graphics, cross-platform front-end apps with back-end integration... all stuff that was pretty hard to do back then, but is now widely available in all modern browsers.<p>Also, both the JavaScript language and runtime were pretty hard to build reliable, performant apps in back when Silverlight was introduced. The JavaScript language and runtimes have matured considerably since then.<p>If it had been my say, I&#x27;d have kept it for a little longer than they did, but by now I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s no longer necessary.<p>There were always two camps in the Silverlight world, both inside and outside of Microsoft: those that saw it as a way to make browser-based applications more awesome, and those that saw Silverlight as a way to get away from that yucky HTML&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;JS dev. I was always firmly in the first camp, and from that side of things I wouldn&#x27;t take back a minute I spent on Silverlight dev - I got a jump on video, vector graphics, browser-based apps, etc., long before it was practical to do that in the browser. When those technologies hit mainstream browsers, great!<p>Note: Microsoft employee but definitely only speaking for myself here.