and those which don’t think MS is just the evil empire per se:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance_improvements_in_net_7/

Just imagine how hard they work to get better. Yeah, they sometimes fail, but overall, they have made the PC a think everyone wants. I remind you of my critique about the dead of Visual Basic. Just imagine they have spent just a hundredth of the time they put into .NET.

It just reminds me of one thing, I think, which covers it all, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs.

VB has done more for developing more software as many other tools combined (exception might be TurboPascal) . And it’s terrible lacking in/with languages like Smalltalk, Common Lisp etc. I will never understand why one kills such a cash cow.

But they did a remarkable job with .NET, and they really spent literally Millions or even Billions on it. Anyway, I don’t know about the prices for the development environment alone because I’m buying them all at around 1500 – 1700 € / year. And so, I can use whatever I want. I know at least that VB was not in that price class, I, personally, think that dropping that was an error. Of course, I might be wrong