Or maybe it's because powershell and C# only run on windows and are not open source and we're not interested in using a technology that is playing catch up with a moving target (mono).

Since you claim C# only runs on Windows and yet mention mono in the same sentence I'll pretend you said instead that mono is not production ready (which I think I could buy, at least for SaaS).

As far as "playing catch up with a moving target", I don't see how that's terribly relevant, the end result is still a platform that continues to improve and advance. If the C# code that runs on Windows and mono is still more advanced than, say, Java or Perl, and continues to advance (even though not as fast as C# on Windows alone) then that's still a benefit. Given the advent of monotouch and the coming of monodroid it seems like even a hard-core MS hater could come to appreciate C#.

> If the C# code that runs on Windows and mono is still more advanced than, say, Java or Perl

The problem is that it's not. You can do anything you want when it comes to SaaS using python, ruby, php, node or java. Actually those have huge open source communities with tons of libs available to make work faster. This is not the case of C# and if it ever gets there, it probably won't be any better. So again, I don't see any reason to use it, and plenty of reasons not to and being a "hard-core MS hater" would probably come at the bottom of the list of reasons not to use C#, don't try to justify the lack of interest in MS by some kind of imaginary persecution. But to each his own , if you're happy with it go for it.

Seriously? I mean, I'm doing my job using the, let's call them, open-source languages: javascript, php, bit of python, java and perl, but, still, I would say that C# is better than most of them, both in terms of the lanuage syntax, features and such, as well as in terms of the quality of libraries. That it's sort of Microsoft-platforms-only keeps me away, but I have to give a credit where it's due: C# is a great piece of technology.

Seriously. C# syntax looks too much like Java, python and ruby have much better syntax IMO and they have way more libraries than C#. But again, to each his own.

well, ruby and python, in your original post you've said c# is no better than java or perl, that makes "a bit" of a difference...

In my original post I said everything you can do with c# you can also do with perl when it comes to building a SaaS. Is there some kind of website that can only be built with c# but not perl? I'm curious.

It's mostly a "niche vision" effect. I know a lot of cool kids that do use C#, list comprehensions, Linq, and appreciate .Net a lot.

Some of them also believe Python, Ruby etc are for kiddies :)