If you need to build anything from a quick-and-dirty GUI utility to a full-fledged desktop application, .NET is the way to go. It doesn't require extensive knowledge of the languages as Visual Studio is extremely helpful in its autocomplete, refactoring, and prompts, and lets you build out your solution easily without worrying about the details of [the] setup and boilerplate.
.NET is heavily Microsoft Windows oriented, and while .NET core tried to resolve that with MacOS and Linux support, .NET Core is still waiting for wider adoption.
While free for small projects, additional features for big projects can be a little expensive.
Can be resource-heavy upon deployment. We continuously have our more senior staff optimize the code of our junior developers for performance. Other languages are a little bit more forgiving in comparison.
.NET frameworks are fantastic overall. There are no limitations to what you can accomplish with it. The most important part is that you'll have access to developer community support and that .NET is always being improved every month. Be it in web applications, back-end servers, or integrations, .NET enables developers to do it all.
As Microsoft Gold Partners, we do have access to a lot of additional information and support from Microsoft. Still, the availability of "open and free" documentation, community, and enthusiasts of the platform is vast. Added to that, the quality of resources provided for all the Microsoft ecosystem is very impressive.
If it was up to me, I'd rather use something like Node.js hands down. Things are simpler, there is no gigantic convoluted class hierarchy to learn like there is with .NET. Also Node is really fast and lightweight. I find .NET these days to be a totally solid product and it certainly has its place - but it seems a bit dated and boring to me now.
We are slowly switching from a dying programming language to .NET because it was too expensive to hire developers for the old programming language. There are way more .NET developers around and an amazing community which has allowed us to keep our costs low.
Our development time has been greatly reduced because now we're not developing applications for each OS platform. We do it once and deploy accordingly.
.NET Core has been a big mindshift in terms of how to program. The learning curve has been quite high for existing .NET developers.
