The ".NET" label was applied to a bunch of things at Microsoft. It was also an early name given to their social networking / IM things.

But for the last 20-ish years it's really only been applied to things related to the .NET Framework.

So, yes - Visual Basic.NET is a language - it's the language that replaced Visual Basic 6. It compiles to the Intermediate Language (IL) that the Common Language Runtime (CLR) executes. There are other languages that compile to IL, too like C#, F#.

The .NET Framework is really a bunch of libraries and tools that are packaged together.

The .NET Standard is a standard that allows you to build a library to a known set of supported libraries and IL / CLR features.

So, yes, depending on which specific part you're referring to - it's all of those.

This was probably copying Sun's "we put the dot in .COM" advertising. Yes, this is stupid.

Microsoft needs to stop letting marketing decide product names. Just look at Xbox: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.

The "Xbox Series X" is such a nonsensical name that only a marketing department could come with it. And this entire line of names exists solely because someone thought that nobody would buy a "Xbox 2" instead of a "PlayStation 3".

Because X's mean moar marketing power... Like the Extreme X870E X motherboard... There's multiple X's and Extremes and the X's mean extreme... so it's moar extreme!!!

Floor wax/desert topping!

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75ishimmer.phtml

Absolutely!

I’m just sad the video is not readily available because the facial expressions enhance the spot-on vocal inflections.

We do have the vocal inflections: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wPO8PqHGWFU

It's the Microsoft way to apply the same name to bunch of unrelated products.

everything is .net, azure, 365, now also copilot.

Branding be branding, yo.

Copilot is just Clippy II+.

More like Clippy-II/ChatGPT.