Microsoft is making inroads performance wise (and have been for a while). RyuJIT seems to deliver a nice, practical boost to performance. .NET Native lets you

Microsoft is making inroads performance wise (and have been for a while). RyuJIT seems to deliver a nice, practical boost to performance. .NET Native lets you sidestep (with several caveats) the JIT and start executing your code much more quickly. And every other major release they seem to tune the GC to be harder/better/faster/stronger etc.