Re: Just a guess
"Dude you're either deluded or a little too obsessed with the semantics of programming language to consider the economic reality of building a system like this."
Having worked in backend systems for a number of major investment banks (UBS, JPM, ML to namedrop a few) I think I know the reality of building large systems.
"I've built HP systems in Visual Basic.NET*."
Visual Basic eh? Wow, you're a real hard core.
"Because no matter how good you are (and I'm really good)"
Ah , and modest too. Tell me, how come someone who is "really good" at C++ is earning a living coding in VB?
"it's going to take way too long and cost far too much in C++."
If you hire amateurs. If you hire pros like banks tend to then it gets done in a reasonable time plus its damn fast and doesn't suck up resources like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat buffet which is generally what happens with managed languages.
"You will in fact have used my VB code if you've ever done an online tax return."
So this code runs in every country in the world does it?