I think C# is incredibly close to Java in this regard. Not in the specifics of e.g. your problem, but the big "solutions" tend to be very enterprise solution-y

I think C# is incredibly close to Java in this regard. Not in the specifics of e.g. your problem, but the big "solutions" tend to be very enterprise solution-y, single-goal orientated. Spring in JAVA (also J2EE) had a similar sort of issue, where everything worked as long as you weren't veering off of the beaten path, but things got wildly over-complicated as soon as you dared to stray... The claims made in this article also sound a lot like what Java folk would say back when their platform wasn't yet "cool" - they are nevertheless somewhat successful today, so maybe they have a point? Regardless, you can absolutely do web dev from a simple C# console app, I don't know there are pre-build server frameworks for doing so. If you don't like MS's offering, tough.