Re: Despite coding in it ...
"I never really understood wtf .NET was meant to achieve."
Back in history to the 'dot-bomb' era of the early 21st century... around 2002-ish as I recall.
Ballmer announced this ".Net" (aka '.Not') initiative, in which this web server backend would be magically developed, and everybody would use IIS on a Windows server instead of Apache with PHP on Linux, just to get this new wonderful "new, shiny" thing. Hop on the bandwagon, because THEN you'll have:
a) Microsoft 'Passport' - a one-login for the ENTIRE internet! [didn't happen, still not even with Win-10-nic's cloudy login]. In truth Amazon and others refused to pay the 'Microsoft tax' and wouldn't use it. DOA.
b) pre-made back-end services and that new programming lingo, "C#" (aka 'C-pound'). I have yet to see it go above 10% on the TIOBE index. Seriously, it's as bad as NodeJS and people are using NodeJS instead, from what I can tell.
c) and the implied lock-in to MICROSOFT PLATFORMS as "solutions". 'take over the world'.
well, it was probably an improvement over IIS in a lot of ways, except IIS was coded in NATIVE INSTRUCTIONS and didn't require some stupid P-code or interpreter. Later on, that part diminished.
After this, some "dim bulb" at Micro-shaft "decided" that ".Not" should be on DESKTOPS, too. And so it was expanded (read: bloated) to include ALL KINDS of 'GUI things' for C-pound's benefit.
THEN some independent people invented 'mono' and got "the blessings" of Micro-shaft, which culminated into the release of (you guessed it) ".Net Core". All of this over a period of more than 15 years in which as much bloat as you can imagine (and then a whole lot more) was injected into ".Not" until it became the monolithic cluster-pile of FAIL that it is TODAY.
Meanwhle, REAL developers of Windows and cross-platform software are either using C, C++, or Java to do so. C-pound is a *WANNABE* at best. I've seen attempts at writing Mono cross-platform applications in the past. Usually C-pound only gets the least common denominator of support on "anything that isn't Windows running the latest new, shiny version of '.Not'".
And so, I hope, there's more understanding of ".Not" now... and I really would NOT recommend tying YOUR success into one of Micro-shaft's control mechanisms.