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I assumed that .NET shops sucked, as did a lot of my peers at university. Then I started working at one, and found that C# is a nice language, Visual Studio + R

by Niksko 10y ago

I assumed that .NET shops sucked, as did a lot of my peers at university. Then I started working at one, and found that C# is a nice language, Visual Studio + Resharper is a joy, and that if you follow sensible architectural patterns you can write clean and elegant code. Everything sucks if you do it badly.

sddfd 10y ago
QFT: Everything sucks if you do it badly.
eropple 10y ago
C# is a great language. I should think so--I've been writing it for twelve years, I don't write C# professionally but I pay for ReSharper, and I used to be a huge Mono booster back-in-the-day. I even did Google Summer of Code for them and made friends I've kept ever since. But whole I've consulted for .NET shops, I've very deliberately avoided working for them for a lot of the reasons described in the article to which this one replies. It's not .NET. It's the mentality of so very many of the shops that pick .NET. The stack and the tooling and the nigh-inevitable process pile-on apply what I feel is more or less a band-pass filter on your output. It's relatively hard to write really stinky code. But it's also relatively hard to write great code. That's not a C# thing--you can write great, brilliant, interesting, smart C#! But doing so at a ".NET shop" strikes me as profoundly unlikely. I have yet to see one, parts of Microsoft aside, that seems to actively reward being smart and curious and expansive in your skill set--and I think a lot of it is because you're a .NET shop, the batteries are included, stay in your lane. (The same criticisms apply to Java-not-Kotlin-or-Scala shops; fair is fair.)
- wvenable 10y ago
  > But it's also relatively hard to write great code. What's the definition of great code? In all the languages and platforms that I know (C, C++, JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, C#, etc) if someone wanted me to write "great code" without any other qualifiers I'd pick C# for the job. It's just such a nice well designed static language (except for nullable references) with a reasonably well designed framework that producing great code is pretty easy. I'm patiently waiting for Microsoft to get .NET on everything but for now it seems like JavaScript is the king of that goal.

by Niksko 10y ago

sddfd 10y ago

QFT: Everything sucks if you do it badly.

eropple 10y ago

C# is a great language. I should think so--I've been writing it for twelve years, I don't write C# professionally but I pay for ReSharper, and I used to be a huge Mono booster back-in-the-day. I even did Google Summer of Code for them and made friends I've kept ever since. But whole I've consulted for .NET shops, I've very deliberately avoided working for them for a lot of the reasons described in the article to which this one replies. It's not .NET. It's the mentality of so very many of the shops that pick .NET. The stack and the tooling and the nigh-inevitable process pile-on apply what I feel is more or less a band-pass filter on your output. It's relatively hard to write really stinky code. But it's also relatively hard to write great code. That's not a C# thing--you can write great, brilliant, interesting, smart C#! But doing so at a ".NET shop" strikes me as profoundly unlikely. I have yet to see one, parts of Microsoft aside, that seems to actively reward being smart and curious and expansive in your skill set--and I think a lot of it is because you're a .NET shop, the batteries are included, stay in your lane. (The same criticisms apply to Java-not-Kotlin-or-Scala shops; fair is fair.)

wvenable 10y ago
> But it's also relatively hard to write great code. What's the definition of great code? In all the languages and platforms that I know (C, C++, JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, C#, etc) if someone wanted me to write "great code" without any other qualifiers I'd pick C# for the job. It's just such a nice well designed static language (except for nullable references) with a reasonably well designed framework that producing great code is pretty easy. I'm patiently waiting for Microsoft to get .NET on everything but for now it seems like JavaScript is the king of that goal.