I agree, but to me that's an odd phenomenon. I didn't grow up with that stigma and not sure what age/group it affects more. I started on a Commodore, which used Commodore BASIC (based on Bill Gate's Microsoft BASIC). As far as business criticism against them, I view the underlying economic system that allows and perpetuates it as the culprit. Not a single entity like MS, Amazon, Oracle etc. I'm not a cherry-picker, not productive and it's not rational. Bad actors are smacked down and it would be all of them if they thought they could get away with it. I'm in favor of changing the business model, not harping on the "new bad guy" every few years. Today it seems to be Google.
I think it's mostly a lack of insightfulness and thought that leads to cherry-picking bad guys when the system is structured in a way where unscrupulous behavior is worth risking. I could be wrong, maybe Microsoft is evil incarnate but at the level I operate on, I don't see it.
But yes, no reason to not embrace the good parts from Microsoft, or anyone else. That's how I do it. I chose C# to stick with because I believe in what they're doing around it. Huge fan of Blazor, appreciate their focus on long-term support, their product integration, and their excellent tooling. The language is good, and I can get a job doing it anywhere in the country without being in a major metropolitan area. In some of these metrics, I personally don't think you can beat the C# ecosystem.
