I hear ya. I'm a .net developer, but mainly ASP.NET (c# and Vb). MAME front ends seem simple since they just make command line calls. But, then you add skinning, customization, and Plugins and things get out of hand pretty quick.
I'm just looking to write a small MaLa addin to support a second monitor and maybe show marquees and cps on a 7" screen below my monitor. Not really that complicated in C#, but I'm not going to back to C++ to get it done. Been almost 10 years since my college C++ days.