IMO .NET is a great option for newcomers. In more recent years, a substantial amount of work has done into making .NET more accessible for everyone. Today can run .NET on MacOS, Linux and IoT devices (.. and of course Windows). That also includes building mobile apps for Android and iOS. You have solid developer tooling that'll help you get started, and most of them are free.

We've also revamped our docs to make them more modern and approachable. They're also open source, so feel free to add or update the documentation if you feel like contributing. Also, if you browse through Microsoft Virtual Academy you'll come across tons off free video training material.

This upcoming AMA might be a good opportunity for you to learn more from one of the most knowledge individuals in the .NET community. hashnode.com/ama/with-scott-hanselman-cjbx98jh506…

Current scope of .net is good and the future scope of dot net is great because dot Net adopt new things according to industry requirement and make themselves unfriendly and easy to use.

So do not hesitate to learn dot net or join the .Net Training . Go ahead future is waiting for you.

From what I can see .net has been undergoing a sort of transformation. It's gone largely open source and it's been getting modernized so that its workflow and feature set works better with what modern web developers are looking for.

With that there's also a bit of confusion as things are often changing and evolving. ASP.net Core 2.0 for example was just released. ASP.net Core works on both Windows and Linux. However, there is still support for the "classic" ASP.net and .net frameworks that still support things like web forms, WPF and WCF.

So we have this dual drive in .net to support the old stuff but march forward to support more modern development frameworks and workflows.

Personally I like .net because C# is my favorite language. I think it's always a good time for a newcomer to learn .net because they can use it to build Windows apps, iOS apps, Android apps, IoT apps and web apps.

Admittedly it can be daunting for a new developer to do so because there are just so many different .net paths that can be taken. For example someone new might start going down the path of web forms for web development when really the recommended path would be asp.net MVC or asp.net Core. Plus when searching it can be confusing for someone new to differentiate between information related to the older .net stuff versus the newer stuff.