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Part of me wonders if ASP.NET will make a comeback. A lot of the historical reasons not to use it don't exist anymore (there's an officially-supported Linux por

Part of me wonders if ASP.NET will make a comeback. A lot of the historical reasons not to use it don't exist anymore (there's an officially-supported Linux port, for example), and a lot of the cool new JavaScript language features like async/await and arrow functions came from C#. Besides, most JavaScript programmers are already dependent on Microsoft products like TypeScript, NPM, and Visual Studio Code. What's one more?

sk5t 7y ago
I imagine nobody knows what "ASP.NET" means nowadays as distinct from C# / .NET Core.
tluyben2 7y ago
ASP.NET Core has been running fine on Linux and Mac OS X for years now. I have been building backends in it for those same years using Linux mostly. The ecosystem is nice and stable (been run high traffic APIs in production for years which never have any issues) and code written years ago simply works without issues after updating libs/runtime to the latest version (Even from 2.1 to 3.1 we had barely any work). Unlike RoR or JS projects I maintain which break quite a lot on update.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  It starts, yes, but the experience is still as miserable as on Windows. They just brought the Windows idiocies with them. The debugger (clrdbg) is still artificially restricted from running inside anything else than MS' IDEs. The global certificate store is still a thing. On that note, the cryptography support varies wildly between platforms, because they still insist on using SChannel on Windows. And I guess that means that they have to use SecureTransport on macOS, to avoid appearing to play favourites or something. The action at a distance that it encouragtes would make you think you're in a haunted house. Despite bringing the Windows mentality with them everywhere, there still isn't a competent migration story from Framework, so what's the point? Legacy code is still a pain to port, and you'd be crazy to actually want to write new code in this mess.
- eitland 7y ago
  I've used it as well and it is really really nice, especially on Linux as it starts extremely much faster there which was important for my work. It is still not in the same league as Java when it comes to dev tools and the Java ecosystem keeps getting better as well, but at the moment I am torn between the two (or rather, I have two excellent options that I can choose depending on circumstances.)
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    I agree: I also work with Java and JVM languages and I was a fulltime Java dev for 10 years before but the first client (a bank) on our product insisted on .NET 7 years ago and we had some .NET expertise already and went all in. .NET Core is nice enough to do very large projects in though so I cannot see many reasons of moving away from it (especially from F# which I mostly use now).
gentleman11 7y ago
Is it open source?
- csande17 7y ago
  I think so! They have a repo called "ASP.NET Core" on GitHub with an Apache license: https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore . ("Core" here means that it's the version of .NET that can run on Linux.) The "dotnet" organization also has repositories for the C# compiler and runtime.
- leosarev 7y ago
  Yes! Compiler, sdk, runtime and framework.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  Kind of? Vital parts are still closed (like the debugger), and the tooling still assumes a closed-source world (for example, with OmniSharp, jump-to-definition to dependencies just gives you a synthetic source file that only contains method signatures). It's also not exactly run like a community project. The issue tracker feels more like a customer support system: "can you try updating to the newest release now?" abound, with no mention of what the actual problem or fix was.
pjmlp 7y ago
Comeback? It never went away. From where I am standing it has always been either Java or .NET since the last 20 years, while we keep seeing stuff coming and going every couple of years.

sk5t 7y ago

I imagine nobody knows what "ASP.NET" means nowadays as distinct from C# / .NET Core.

tluyben2 7y ago

ASP.NET Core has been running fine on Linux and Mac OS X for years now. I have been building backends in it for those same years using Linux mostly. The ecosystem is nice and stable (been run high traffic APIs in production for years which never have any issues) and code written years ago simply works without issues after updating libs/runtime to the latest version (Even from 2.1 to 3.1 we had barely any work). Unlike RoR or JS projects I maintain which break quite a lot on update.

Nullabillity 7y ago
It starts, yes, but the experience is still as miserable as on Windows. They just brought the Windows idiocies with them. The debugger (clrdbg) is still artificially restricted from running inside anything else than MS' IDEs. The global certificate store is still a thing. On that note, the cryptography support varies wildly between platforms, because they still insist on using SChannel on Windows. And I guess that means that they have to use SecureTransport on macOS, to avoid appearing to play favourites or something. The action at a distance that it encouragtes would make you think you're in a haunted house. Despite bringing the Windows mentality with them everywhere, there still isn't a competent migration story from Framework, so what's the point? Legacy code is still a pain to port, and you'd be crazy to actually want to write new code in this mess.
eitland 7y ago
I've used it as well and it is really really nice, especially on Linux as it starts extremely much faster there which was important for my work. It is still not in the same league as Java when it comes to dev tools and the Java ecosystem keeps getting better as well, but at the moment I am torn between the two (or rather, I have two excellent options that I can choose depending on circumstances.)
- tluyben2 7y ago
  I agree: I also work with Java and JVM languages and I was a fulltime Java dev for 10 years before but the first client (a bank) on our product insisted on .NET 7 years ago and we had some .NET expertise already and went all in. .NET Core is nice enough to do very large projects in though so I cannot see many reasons of moving away from it (especially from F# which I mostly use now).

gentleman11 7y ago

Is it open source?

csande17 7y ago
I think so! They have a repo called "ASP.NET Core" on GitHub with an Apache license: https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore . ("Core" here means that it's the version of .NET that can run on Linux.) The "dotnet" organization also has repositories for the C# compiler and runtime.
leosarev 7y ago
Yes! Compiler, sdk, runtime and framework.
Nullabillity 7y ago
Kind of? Vital parts are still closed (like the debugger), and the tooling still assumes a closed-source world (for example, with OmniSharp, jump-to-definition to dependencies just gives you a synthetic source file that only contains method signatures). It's also not exactly run like a community project. The issue tracker feels more like a customer support system: "can you try updating to the newest release now?" abound, with no mention of what the actual problem or fix was.

pjmlp 7y ago

Comeback? It never went away. From where I am standing it has always been either Java or .NET since the last 20 years, while we keep seeing stuff coming and going every couple of years.