[eropple]

> Besides the fact that there are alternatives (and that you don't even need it in the first place), personal competence ---not getting it to run-- is not a valid reason to discard it.

How about being an absolutely terrible method of dependency management? And yet it's the only serious game in town? Ruby has RubyGems. Python has PyPI. Java has Maven (and its mutually compatible friends). Mono has...NuGet. It's still pretty bad, even when you get it to run. Boy-howdy, do I want my projects cluttered with downloaded dependencies in 2013. :-(

Seriously, even today dependency management is the worst part of dealing with .NET. (There are worse parts of Mono, but most people will never run into most of them. I wouldn't if I wasn't trying to bend it to do things it probably shouldn't be bent to do.)