IMHO I think it is the best framework to build software on. Since you are coming from Java, It should not be too difficult to adjust to C#. NET Core has come a long way. NET6 is just amazing. With the minimal API, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/minimal-apis?view=aspnetcore-6.0 REST API should be very easy work for starters. When you settle in, you can go more advanced.

Although this is dated - https://download.microsoft.com/download/D/E/E/DEE91FC0-7AA9-4F6E-9FFA-8658AA0FA080/CSharp%20for%20Java%20Developers%20-%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf it provides you side by side comparison of syntax. Another cool read is - https://betterprogramming.pub/java-to-c-c-to-java-f766c9f659c4

Feel free to reach out if you need any assistance.

Welcome aboard

You will find that the transition from Java to C# is pretty smooth. Working with .NET has become much more intuitive and has a lot to offer. I highly recommend using Visual Studio as your IDE. It makes things much easier and is not too different than other IDEs like IntelliJ. There are also Visual Studio templates for web APIs that make it really easy to get up and running. Microsoft has good documentation and tutorials to help you get familiar with the technology. I would start there.

I would recommend that you become familiar with the C# language. J. Albahari's reference book is suitable for this. To learn rest api development, read Andrew Lock's book "Asp Net Core in Action"

If you are already committed to Python for the data analysis then it would make sense to use Django for the framework and stick with Python throughout. In general the fewer technologies you use (unless there is real justification) will improve process and long term costs.

All things being equal the fact you would not have less (likely no) licensing costs with a Python based solution will overall reduce your long term costs.

If you will be doing data analysis and complex algorithms Django is best suited for this because of it' maturity and the huge communities providing lots of Python libraries for data analysis and more.

Since the course is in Python, a Python web framework seems like a logical choice. Django is a good option, but Flask and FastAPI are far more lightweight than Django, and great for quickly adding an API on top of your ML/NLP code. Django has its merits, especially the generated admin interface, but requires a lot of boilerplate code.

The one thing I wouldn't do is mix the two, different structures and ideas for how to do things

Taking a class in python already? I'd lean to Django Want to learn a language that will carry forward to a good paying job .net

Python is an excellent language, though it's often being replaced with things like go which uses a similar syntax

Over time you're going to learn many languages if you want to be a great programmer spend your time with one and dive deep, learn what makes it shine and what the draw backs are grow proficient with it and then consider learning something different so you can compare

Early on learning a single language at depth is more important than tinkering with several or learning any specific language

Good luck

What you mean integrate on "all my APIs are in Azure App service and this has to integrate with Windows desktop application.". Try to explain a little bit what's your requirements.

If you want to Read/Write a SQL DB on premises, you can use a Azure Gateway without deploy anything in your server, another choice with SQL Server is to move the DB to Azure (if supported). You can use the triggers on Azure Functions to write/read something on Azure Storage, from your Server you can read the storage and perform some tasks. As you can see there are multiple choice without writing much code on premises, try to clarify your requirements.

It all depends on your use case. You mentioning "scheduled task" appears you want to use a Worker Service

If you want to trigger your actions you can host a webapi, too.

Bottomline: Both use cases suffice your needs so your course depends on where you want to "control" your app ( set delay, maybe sometimes start the action manually ). WorkerService -> Config file on the host Api -> Configure from client

Go with Node.js. There's something really satisfying about being able to use a single language across your entire tech stack. Especially once you integrate GraphQL, which is effectively JSON.

Your second best option is Go, but the ecosystem around Node.js is quite a bit stronger. This will play a big factor when you start building functionality like file management, messaging (especially in real-time), and authentication. The libraries and documentation are just stronger for Node.