Keep in mind I've never done ASP.NET (only desktop development): The old C# stuff is indeed crusty, intermixed with hot nonsense from the Balmer days. Latest

Keep in mind I've never done ASP.NET (only desktop development): The old C# stuff is indeed crusty, intermixed with hot nonsense from the Balmer days. Latest Framework version is I'd say OK, nothing to write home about, newer stuff is much better (.net 5, 6). I do think MS SQL Server is a bit, well, bad. But don't worry, irrelevant to the C# stuff - I used to use java servlets to query mssql, while it was better performing than mysql, I wouldn't pick it again. The anecdote about the React frontend bit is interesting, but ultimately depends on what the UI was doing. JS is certainly good to bang out some quick UI, but if it was shell for the backend, I'd say your app was either mis-designed or just naturally backend heavy. Again, haven't used (not in web dev right now), but Blazor exists for doing C# web UI, instead of complaining that the backend was bad/hard a better comparison would be between Blazor and React. Or you could switch architectures and do a non-component-based web UI - faster to put together a mashup of JS junk but it doesn't necessarily perform as well as doing a web client old-style - simple request response works for a lot of use-cases, its not as flashy, but it is fast.