No, that's a fair interpretation of my comment - after all, the meaning of "cloud optimized" is kind of vague. However, if you compare the new version and previous version and the new version ticks more positive boxes for cloud usage scenarios, then it's not unreasonable to call the new version "cloud optimized".
Beyond the modularization efforts, one could look at the Linux port and dramatic performance improvements in the same light.
The Asp.Net core are on record several times saying the primary goal was to be able to cram more websites per host for Azure Websites to reduce costs and to remove the issues of servicing a machine wide framework. Sounds like 'cloud optimized' was a good fit in the early days! :)
I think he's right in terms of deployment scenarios.
In contrast, the "old style" was to setup a physical server manually: install the OS, install all the dependencies for your application, configure everything manually. If you need to scale out or replace a broken server, you repeat these steps. There are of course various levels of automation that can be done with this, but dealing with physical severs meant at least some manual effort was always required.
In this case, I read "cloud optimized" as you can easily deploy to the typical "cloud" server instance or container (which is basically an installed OS with enough config to get it on the network). Your application doesn't have any dependencies: for example, .NET Core (framework) is bundled.
That's not how I read it. Rather, it makes sense for a cloud-focused company/development team to focus on efforts aligned with that cloud-focused strategy. The work in .NET Core and ASP .NET Core clearly fits this description.
Having things modular have a myriad of benefits, fitting the cloud being just one of them.
Making things modular is good design in my book way before the term "cloud" even existed.
Modular things also have drawbacks. They need to be versioned, deployment is a lot more complicated, etc.
I feel that in the case of .NET Core claiming that the changes were cloud-focused is valid. After all, .NET was already in place and Microsoft didn't really need to make it that modular. It did do it and it spent a lot of resources doing it, in order to follow its cloud strategy.
