[outworlder]

The C# language is fine, F# is also fine (let's pretend VB does not exist). The CLR is fine (and, in some cases, even better than the JVM).

What is not fine is the rest of the ecosystem. Going Microsoft usually means Windows (good luck convincing etc corp. to run on Mono), and sometimes, even things like Sharepoint.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd pick C# over Java any day, but dragging all that baggage is not acceptable.

[giulianob]

Did you read the article?

"ASP.NET vNext (and Rosyln) runs on Mono, on both Mac and Linux today. While Mono isn't a project from Microsoft, we'll collaborate with the Mono team, plus Mono will be added to our test matrix. It's our aspiration that it "just work.""

[weego]

He clearly did, and I echo his sentiment that the chances of Business X buying into the strategy of going .NET but without the ecosystem (what in most people eyes is the safety net of guaranteed support etc) are very close to zero. Even more so when they start trying to hire .net devs with strong linux devops skills.

[Spearchucker]

"(let's pretend VB does not exist)"

What's wrong with VB? It does no more and no less than C# does, with different syntax. Shall we just do away with English, because German is just so much more to my taste?

[taspeotis]

> It does no more and no less than C# does, with different syntax

They're basically equivalent [1] and I (personally) would rather MS drop the engineering efforts they have in place with VB.NET and focus them on C#.

[1] In one or two places VB.NET has more functionality than C#. It has syntax for the CLR's Exception Filters whereas C# does not (although I believe the C# dialect that Roslyn supports is going to change this).

[GFischer]

When I was a fresh graduate, I swore I was never going to program in VB.

Now I've grown very used to the VB.NET syntax, and when I go back to other languages, I hate two things:

- case sensitivity and

- the semicolon (;)

I can live with curly braces ({}) :) though having each line be its own statement is very convenient.

There are several things to dislike about the VB.NET syntax (Dim being the most egregious), but I think many languages could adopt some of its benefits.

Groovy in particular did away with the semicolon, and I'm glad :)

[vorg]

> Groovy in particular did away with the semicolon

Both Scala and Javascript also make the end-of-line semicolon optional.

[gtirloni]

good luck convincing etc corp. to run on Mono

Someone said the same about Linux too.