It feels like C# has an answer to every problem I’ve ever had with other languages - dynamic loading, ADTs with pattern matching, functional programming, whatever this expression tree is, reflection, etc etc. Yet somehow it’s still a niche language that isn't widely used (outside of particular ecosystems).
I've worked only at startups/small businesses since I graduated university and it's all been in C#.
fucking nice ecosystem
You were maybe already getting at it, but as a kitchen sink language the answer is "simplicity". All these diverse language features increase cognitive load when reading code, so it's a complexity/utility tradeoff
If you dare leave the safety of a compiler you'll find that Sublime Merge can still save you when rewriting a whole part of an app. That and manual testing (because automatic testing is also clutter).
If you think it's more professional to have a compiler I'd like to agree but then why did I run into a PHP job when looking for a Typescript one? Not an uncommon unfolding of events.
Granted, I started out on LISP. My version of "easy to read and write" might be slightly masochistic. But I love Perl and Python and Javascript are definitely "you can jump in and get shit done if you have worked in most languages. It might not be idiomatic, but it'll work"...
It does require twice the lines of PHP code to make a Ruby or Python program equivalent, or more if you add phpdoc and static types though, so it is easier to read/write Ruby or Python, but only after learning the details of the language. Ruby's syntax is very expressive but very complex if you don't know it by heart.
Specifically, I'd like to be able to have "inches" as a generic type, where it could be an int, long, float, double. Then I'd also like to have "length" as a generic type where it could be inches as a double, millimeters as a long, ect, ect.
I know they added generic numbers to the language in C# 7, so maybe there is a way to do it?
Pi types, existential types and built-in macros to name a few.