Did Python or Ruby bring something that the Linux ecosystem was lacking at the time? Do you see how this is a fairly irrelevant question?
But to answer it anyway, the .NET VM has quite a few advantages over the JVM, and the libraries and semantics of C# provide a superior experience to Java on the JVM. Of course, no language or VM is perfect.
So C# is a more readable and writable version of Java.
> and Ruby, a clean alternative to PHP once RoR got out
That was 10 years after Ruby was first released. Assuming "justification" is needed, what justified Ruby prior to that?
And I mean "yum" popular. Blender popular. QGIS popular. Not "that script that sort my ssh connection is in Ruby" popular.
How is that relevant? The question was what justified Ruby at the time.
If "Ruby on Rails" was the only justification, why did people use it for the 10 years prior to that? Were they not justified in using it? That's just nonsense.