Could you elaborate on what are missing parts in other ecosystems than .net/c#

I don't have a lot of recent experience with other ecosystems, so take what I say with a grain of salt. With that disclaimer in mind:

* Visual Studio is the best IDE, bar none. It's a pleasure to use and Microsoft keeps it up to date so it's usually bug free for normal use. I don't even know what its serious competitors are. Eclipse? VIM? Forgive me for not knowing. :)

* C# is the best OO programming language (if you don't need the raw speed of C++ or, I guess, Rust). Java is a disappointing mess controlled by, yes, Oracle. Python and other dynamically typed languages are fine for scripting, but not for developing complex professional software.

* F# is the best functional programming language for getting stuff done. In fact, it's the best language for getting stuff done, period. Haskell is amazing for its mathematical purity, and I've learned so much about FP and category theory from the Haskell community, but F# gives you immediate access to the zillions of packages created for the .NET ecosystem and is totally compatible with C#. You can also use F# for imperative OO programming when you need to (which is almost never).

* SQL Server is the best RDBMS. Oracle is painful. The open source databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.) have come a long way, but still don't have SQL Server's combination of power and ease of use. NoSQL databases are interesting, but seriously lacking in important features. I've yet to come across a use case where I would actually want to use one. (Special demerit to MongoDB for using JSON as a query language. Good lord.)

* Windows is fine. It's not Unix/Linux, but it lacks for nothing.

If I had the time to investigate other ecosystems, I'd like to pick up Rust and Haskell. I'm afraid that Python and JavaScript will eat the entire world, before then, though. :)

All of the above is massively IMHO, obviously.

Having switched from the Windows ecosystem to Linux a while back, I have a few comments:

I don’t know how bug-free VS is now, but VS 2005 and 2008 were buggy in problematic ways. Support was friendly, but the bugs didn’t get fixed quickly. IntelliType (for C++) was nifty bug extremely buggy. Switching to emacs was a major step back in usability, but it was enormously faster and it tended to just work.

C# has a top notch compiler. Sadly, MS’s C++ compiler was, and mostly still is, pretty bad.

Getting off of Windows was a big win. Managing a Linux machine is much nicer, and, when something doesn’t work, you have a better chance of figuring out why.

I have no experience with SQL Server. MySQL and PostgreSQL both sucked back then.

Honestly, C# has replaced C++ for the large majority of Windows application developers. Developing C# apps in Visual Studio is basically frictionless in a way that C++ will never be. C++ as a language (regardless of IDE) is a major pain in the butt.

My big Windows program wasn’t a Windows “application”. It was high performance software that happened to run on Windows. C# was not even close to being in the running.

If we were starting from scratch, Rust would be a credible contender.

I think Haskell is a very nice general purpose language. I think of it as a better Java. There's no need to think of it as a scary academic thing, unless one focuses on the wrong kind of blog posts. https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/

I don't mean to knock Haskell at all. It's a fine language with a great community around it.

That said, the number of commercial applications developed in Haskell is very small, because, I think, it doesn't integrate as well into the larger ecosystems around it. It seems like it's a beautiful island all by itself.

The number of commercial applications developed in functional programming languages as a whole is pretty small compared to mainstream languages. I am a dotnet dev and also like F# a lot, but I cannot think of very many commercial applications written in F# either.

That's true, but for someone like me in a C# shop, I can slip F# code into our apps seamlessly. No one would say the apps are written in F#, but several key components are.

Hopefully, FP will take over the world soon and Haskell and F# will both be at the top of the charts! :)

yeah, very cool you were able to find a way to write some F# at work, I wish I could too.

Given trends, I don't expect to see any exponential growth though.

I've found VS 2017 a step down from VS 2015 with way worse performance on iddentical workload and PC.

Does C# have multiple dispatch ala CLOS?

No, it has single dispatch virtual methods, a la C++.