I think he means the newer versions of the stack, from the release of .NET Core 1 in 2016 and onward.

Ok, but even if it's about .NET Core; As far as I can tell the creation of .NET Core was a business decision and not because MS suddenly wanted to create a better product.

More then 50% of the VM's in Azure run Linux and not Windows. On AWS and GCP the percentage VM's running non-Windows OS'es is probably even higher. That's a realistic threat to the continued existence of .NET if .NET only runs on Windows.

Aside from the cost of licensing Windows which makes small-sized non-Windows VMs cheaper, there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.

It’s a preference, not a bias

> there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.

Who doesn't like to talk about it? It's so much easier to integrate components on Linux over windows. Why would anyone willingly use windows for data analysis?

The choice is open, free vs closed, stifling, costly, dark-patterns.

I don't think that's bias.

I just moved to openSUSE.

It's really nice not having advertisements in my start menu.

Isn't wanting to make a better product a business decision?

M$ only improved their product because they want to make more money! Unlike me, who works for free.

Everything every public company does is a business decision

I hate Microsoft as much as your average Gen X tech nerd, but C# is good. I don't care what inspired them to do it.

C# is great. Also VS Code.. how many Microsoft haters on HN daily drive it? I'd have to assume quite a few!

The Remote SSH extension has been a game changer for how I do development.

I like VSCode too. I use it for Clojure, Python, and C#, which I am working in this year and haven't for a very, very long time. I was pleasantly surprised at the progress it has made.

Ironically compared to Windows, MS has been willing to kill backward compatibility more to improve .NET to make it more cross-platform, something that must come from a very different part of the company, probably the one that got the "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" mandate.

I make no apologies for their history, but I like these tools and I like them much better than Java, which also has its place. (This isn't a throwaway comment, notice I said I use Clojure, it's my favorite, which runs on the JVM.)

VS Code is pretty great, and I agree the remote dev extensions (ssh) are hands down the best feature added. I also like that it had a directory tree and the integrated terminal early on, that's what got me hooked.

C# is nice, but the experience in VS Code is sub-par and I think it's the VS (not code) managers that are responsible for that state of being.

Editors have had directory trees and integrated terminals for many years, why is that something you find special?

I'm not familiar with another code editor with an integrated terminal, at least not one as complete as VS Code's before VS Code. I could be mistaken though.

C# is great. If only they hadn't made it windows only from the get go there might be a huge ecosystem supporting it instead of java.

You mean you don't care about Java?

I also hate Oracle. Now what?

OpenJDK, that's what.

Microsoft is terrible in almost every way, but I admit that I very strongly prefer C# over Java.