NEneonsunset·Sep 17, 2023
I'm going to vouch for this comment but not because it is correct but rather it presents good opportunity to address the concern.
C# and .NET are most heavily invested in by Microsoft which owns and steers its development, that is true. It is also true that JVM world sees investment from multiple MSFT-sized corporations.
And yet, despite the above, it keeps moving forward and outperforming Java on user experience, performance and features despite being worked on by much smaller teams. I think it stands on its own as a measure of a well-made technology.
In addition, you can look at source code and contribute yourself, 90% of what makes .NET run is below. Almost all development happens in the open:
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime
https://github.com/dotnet/installer
https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn
https://github.com/dotnet
Read the rest
/aspnetcore
Could Microsoft do a better job at making it even more community-facing and attempting to make the .NET foundation as a sole owner and steering committee of the language itself? Sure. But it's not that bad either today. Quick reminder - Oracle is not exactly a saint, perhaps even worse (MSFT has never gotten into any litigation even remotely related to .NET or C#).
As for career opportunities, as other commenters would note, this is highly specific to a region and does not translate globally. Again, we are discussing the "how good the language/platform is" first and foremost. I don't see startups adopting Go because of the market or trusting Google not to rug pull them...so perhaps we can do a better job so the next language of choice they pick is C#, which has much higher ROI in the hands of the good developers (for example, it can be very easy to adopt as a second language if you are well versed in Rust).