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 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.