Everything comes at a cost.
Native code is faster. That is true indeed.
COM was the Microsoft try of introducing the "bridge" between software components through their interfaces.
That was done in a binary form. COM componets were compatibles each others for they were binary compatible. COM specification granted that compatibility through strict stack morphology rules.
.NET's come to simplify this scenario. contracts between components are now well defined and made thorugh metainfo specification (say a human readable form that is standardized, embedded in each sw component)
The .NET runtime grants this infos to be used and applied. So no matter if you're using VB, C++, C# , Logo, COBOL whatever .. as far as contracts between the sw components you deploy are well defined and under standard protocol, sw components will be easily communicating each other: no matter the underlying physical layer, that is abstracted by the runtime.
This comes at a cost, right. But it's a good compromise.
Native code will not die. It's the core of the system. No one will obscure the tools to make pure native code apps...
As far as CPU will not interpret directly bytecode ...
... maybe we will be in charge of changing the way we've always seen the world ... but until then ...
Best regards,
theCaller