Sure. They really knocked it out of the park with performance in .NET 10. I feel like it matches Go or BEAM performance now but with a lot more tools at your disposal.

I use the 'code-first approach' most the time which really leans into the performance improvements. I can write C# data models that automatically update the database schemas on the SQL side. This is obviously possible in other languages/runtimes, .NET just feels quicker to me once you get it all down and gives you more ways to solve problems than most other languages.

You are correct to mention that especially since theyve eased up on their licensing recently, I had in mind that it was still paid for software like Visual Studio. Rider is much better for .NET than VS code!

yes a key part of the ecosystem! Roslyn is open source as well IIRC

The F# ecosystem probably would not survive abandonment by Microsoft. F# the language would probably be fine, but without the .NET runtime and tooling, it probably wouldn't be compelling. It is not widely adopted in industry, so I think finding corporate sponsorship sufficient to keep it up at the level of the other languages is slim. I don't imagine a world where there is enough community support to keep it relevant.

F# has been a first-class language in .NET for at least 15 years and has lived on under Ballmer and Satya. It seems to serve as a useful R&D program for both the runtime's capabilities and for features that may go into C#, which will be the premiere language barring a cataclysm. I don't think it's quite as precarious as it might seem on the surface.