> Myself - I see the release of .NET as the point where Microsoft started to become more open, more platform-agnostic and more developer-friendly than it had ev

> Myself - I see the release of .NET as the point where Microsoft started to become more open, more platform-agnostic and more developer-friendly than it had ever been before. .NET certainly was more developer friendly, and I guess more open in a way by engaging with standardizing bodies. But more platform-agnostic? The original .NET (anything before dotnet) was very windows-centric. You couldn't take your .NET code and run it anywhere else. The C# language was ISO-certified, sure, but not the APIs. And C# without the APIs is quite uninteresting. MS only started being interested in platform agnosticism again in the last 3-4 years, because they aren't the dominant platform anymore in a few important verticals (servers and mobile). But for most of the previous decade, they have not cared at all about it.