But it really is, in a sense that another program is required to interpret IL format, even if it is JIT-compiled after loading. Think of it similar to the ELF interpreter for dynamically-linked binaries.

Speaking of compilation to a self-contained binary, I hope in the future G# will support it. No mentions as of today though.

That hasn’t been true for some time.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

The reason to dislike .NET is Microsoft’s now weak engineering. Their cloud team has negative impact on the entire org, and Microsoft engineers like Raymond Chen seem to be a rarity.

Even former cash cows like Windows and Office are struggling and infected with Nadella and Azure/Entra/365/who-knows-what-next’s touch.