6 ms·

As a new joiner from Java on applications that are decades old, I wish it would be more backward compatible. I cant forgive they didnt find a way to fix WinFor

As a new joiner from Java on applications that are decades old, I wish it would be more backward compatible. I cant forgive they didnt find a way to fix WinForms, that we cant find the budget to move away from and limp along trying to upgrade out of. But at least unlike Java, their GUIs do work well enough for a fraction of the maintenance cost of what I know. So meh, begging the sky to find anyone willing to do .NET in 2022 so I can go back to my cave lol. All the OG experts we interview are interested by our path to Java because they want out and Im like "but dude we'll teach you Java but we really need someone who has a clue in C#/.NET and likes it" :s

MauroIksem 5y ago
Where are you hiring? I'm primarily a .net dev at a uni in the states. I'm surprised you're having trouble finding someone.
Beltiras 5y ago
I have a clue about C#/.NET. Did it professionally for almost 2 years. That's why I don't like it.
- francisofascii 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on why?
  - Beltiras 5y ago
    Sure. I like Linux and OSS. If anything happens that is unexpected I can trace it back to the source code that makes up my programming environment. I actually like C# as a programming language. It's .NET that's effed up. .NET development happens behind clicks and VS interfaces. The resulting configuration ends up in REALLY unreadable XML files, sometimes obfuscated behind object ids even. I like flat-file human-readable configuration. Also, Entity Framework can just curl up in a ball and die somewhere alone and crying. It's the most useless ORM I have ever worked with. And the documentation on it is just plain wrong often. Following a basic example can lead to results different from those advertised in documentation. This is all born from experience. I was working on a project I believed in and came to it after the stack used was crystallized and unchangeable. I ended up throwing my hands up in disgust and leaving.
    - Someone1234 5y ago
      > .NET development happens behind clicks and VS interfaces. That hasn't really been the case since .Net Core (aka .Net 5/6) replaced .Net Framework. You can develop entirely from the terminal if that is your choice or use Rider instead of Visual Studio if you want a cross-platform IDE. > The resulting configuration ends up in REALLY unreadable XML files You can now put the entire framework straight into the executables' directory, no more system-wide XML files. The concept of pre-installed .Net is legacy. > This is all born from experience. Of .Net Framework, which is deprecated.
      - Beltiras 5y ago
        Consider this toast burnt for life. I am not about to trust anything coming from Redmond for life. This is in spite of having great respect for things coming from Microsoft Research. I'll happily use their toy OS for my games but if I intend to do serious work I will not interact with Microsoft offerings except ephemerally.
        Someone1234 5y ago
        Let's untangle this: - .Net Framework made a bunch of unfortunate design decisions. - You hated .Net Framework as a direct result. - .Net Core (aka .Net 5/6) fixed the problems, went OSS, went cross-platform, de-coupled from proprietary tooling. "Consider this toast burnt for life." I don't understand; if your disdain for .Net is meant to be technically founded then technical (and governance) improvements should address it but yet it doesn't here. Can you unravel why them essentially going through your laundry list of problems and fixing them one by one has left the "toast burnt for life?"
        Beltiras 5y ago
        Yes. I have never been burnt by these other software tools. I like them better. They work as advertised and any new features are new features, not fixes.
    - angrysaki 5y ago
talos2110 5y ago
What do you mean about WinForms? Look at this https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/whats-new-in-windows-forms-in-net-6-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/whats-new-in-windows-f... from a couple of months ago, you can still use it pretty well
- pjmlp 5y ago
  As long as you are willing to put up with the bugs on the new .NET Core based designer, and can get new components that were rewritten for the new out-of-process architecture of the designer.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  You can use it but maybe I didnt explain that I work mainly in performance optimization of heavy trading applications in electronic trading for a tier 1 investment bank. No I cant explain why we wont finance a gigantic team to redo it all, but anyway: we need this to go faster, and I wish MS would fix WinForms to make them transparently faster rather than me profiling with despair "yes hum modals will always be a bit slow to redraw 50 controls, we could port to the new stuff but we're not sure it ll get better (but at least we ll benefit from more framework level optim) and it's so different we need a new guy" "then find a new guy", im told, and then every new guy who did some low latency GUI at our level (our app is very optimized but China will decuple volume eventually so...) will tell me he desperately wants out to move to java backend where all the fun is... which I cant deny since that s where I got extracted from urgently when half the .NET team left out of despair to go do Java in other banks lol. I even grew to like .NET even if Ill never wrap my head around the build process and dependency management. Just a wish that MS would continue to optimize winform somehow so I wouldnt have to recode forms doing exactly the same thing. I suppose it s nonsensical since the new paradigm IS the optim but one can whine :D
  - int_19h 5y ago
    WinForms sits on top of classic Win32 UI (HWND etc) architecturally, and that's what constrains its performance more than anything else. The way you get more perf is by taking over and rendering everything yourself, like WPF or WinUI does. But you can't do that while maintaining backwards compatibility - stuff like Control.Handle or IWin32Window.
hvidgaard 5y ago
You can run your WinForms application on the latest LTS version of dotnet, .NET6. As always, upgrading to a new version of the framework, means you have to migrate some parts of the codebase, especially from an older .net3-4. That isn't really that different from Java If I'd have candidates that want out from .NET I'd be very intrigued and want to know why. Specifically, I don't want any that want out because the tech was changing rapidly. I can understand the overhead is somewhat annoying, but it's for the better and it seems to be a lot more stable again.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  > If I'd have candidates that want out from .NET I'd be very intrigued and want to know why. Every time I change jobs I always try. It's not that I hate .Net, it's just that I want to try something different. .Net is awesome, but it's always useful to see how other languages and platforms do things. For example, compiler enforced null checking in C# is lousy compared to Swift or Rust.
  - starik36 5y ago
    In .NET 6, there is new "EnableNullable" directive that will do that. It's on by default for new projects.
    - gwbas1c 5y ago
      It's horrible. For example, it treats Linq's .First() as nullable. (.First() throws an exception, .FirstOrDefault() returns null.) Type.Name is also treated as nullable. I didn't encounter any issues like that when I tried Swift and Rust.
      - Genbox 5y ago
        That is not true. LINQ's First() correctly returns a non-nullable type: https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,11 https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,11 FirstOrDefault() correctly returns a nullable type: https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,33 https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,33 typeof(type).Name is MemberInfo.Name, which is also not nullable: https://source.dot.net/#System.Private.CoreLib/MemberInfo.cs,14 https://source.dot.net/#System.Private.CoreLib/MemberInfo.cs... I checked both .NET 5 and .NET 6. They have identical nullability.
pjmlp 5y ago
We do both stacks, on the backend we have the problem that most shops don't really buy into the whole .NET Core stack for Linux workloads story unless they happen to be Azure shops.
Quarrelsome 5y ago
No idea where this Java elitism is coming from, dotnet and Java are ridiculously similar. I'd do dotnet for you in 2022 if you're willing to pay me more than my current corp with the same benefits, the language/platform is just fine. Winform is also fine its just bad at transparency and most applications that are written using it are poorly written.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  The usual stuff, Spectrum vs C64, Amiga vs Atari vs PC vs Mac, vi vs Emacs, Pascal vs C, C vs C++, ...... and naturally Java vs .NET, specially given J++ history and its relation to C#.
manigandham 5y ago
There are millions of .NET developers ready and able to do whatever you need. I do find that the market for .NET is very underpaid though compared to the more popular stacks used at FAANG companies. Are you really having that much trouble finding devs?
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  My group just hired our first .NET dev in years after many interviews. Maybe they’re all working for the big banks. Or maybe all the .NET engineers realized they’re underpaid and have learned other technologies. My own experience is that outside of Azure, .NET has become extremely painful. FWIW, modern .NET and Visual Studio (anywhere other than ASP) is deserving of hazard pay, at the very least to compensate for the mental health cost of Visual Studio’s constant gaslighting. I love my manager and team, but pretty soon I’m going to be telling them that I’m leaving, because .NET (on desktop and mobile) has given me 5+ years of very good reasons to hate it.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    In what concerns the desktop, it has become a mess with the UWP failure, so they are now shoting in all possible directions, unfortunely.

MauroIksem 5y ago

Where are you hiring? I'm primarily a .net dev at a uni in the states. I'm surprised you're having trouble finding someone.

Beltiras 5y ago

I have a clue about C#/.NET. Did it professionally for almost 2 years. That's why I don't like it.

francisofascii 5y ago
Can you elaborate on why?
- Beltiras 5y ago
  Sure. I like Linux and OSS. If anything happens that is unexpected I can trace it back to the source code that makes up my programming environment. I actually like C# as a programming language. It's .NET that's effed up. .NET development happens behind clicks and VS interfaces. The resulting configuration ends up in REALLY unreadable XML files, sometimes obfuscated behind object ids even. I like flat-file human-readable configuration. Also, Entity Framework can just curl up in a ball and die somewhere alone and crying. It's the most useless ORM I have ever worked with. And the documentation on it is just plain wrong often. Following a basic example can lead to results different from those advertised in documentation. This is all born from experience. I was working on a project I believed in and came to it after the stack used was crystallized and unchangeable. I ended up throwing my hands up in disgust and leaving.
  - Someone1234 5y ago
    > .NET development happens behind clicks and VS interfaces. That hasn't really been the case since .Net Core (aka .Net 5/6) replaced .Net Framework. You can develop entirely from the terminal if that is your choice or use Rider instead of Visual Studio if you want a cross-platform IDE. > The resulting configuration ends up in REALLY unreadable XML files You can now put the entire framework straight into the executables' directory, no more system-wide XML files. The concept of pre-installed .Net is legacy. > This is all born from experience. Of .Net Framework, which is deprecated.
    - Beltiras 5y ago
      Consider this toast burnt for life. I am not about to trust anything coming from Redmond for life. This is in spite of having great respect for things coming from Microsoft Research. I'll happily use their toy OS for my games but if I intend to do serious work I will not interact with Microsoft offerings except ephemerally.
      - Someone1234 5y ago
        Let's untangle this: - .Net Framework made a bunch of unfortunate design decisions. - You hated .Net Framework as a direct result. - .Net Core (aka .Net 5/6) fixed the problems, went OSS, went cross-platform, de-coupled from proprietary tooling. "Consider this toast burnt for life." I don't understand; if your disdain for .Net is meant to be technically founded then technical (and governance) improvements should address it but yet it doesn't here. Can you unravel why them essentially going through your laundry list of problems and fixing them one by one has left the "toast burnt for life?"
        Beltiras 5y ago
        Yes. I have never been burnt by these other software tools. I like them better. They work as advertised and any new features are new features, not fixes.
  - angrysaki 5y ago

talos2110 5y ago

What do you mean about WinForms? Look at this https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/whats-new-in-windows-forms-in-net-6-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/whats-new-in-windows-f... from a couple of months ago, you can still use it pretty well

pjmlp 5y ago
As long as you are willing to put up with the bugs on the new .NET Core based designer, and can get new components that were rewritten for the new out-of-process architecture of the designer.
secondaryacct 5y ago
You can use it but maybe I didnt explain that I work mainly in performance optimization of heavy trading applications in electronic trading for a tier 1 investment bank. No I cant explain why we wont finance a gigantic team to redo it all, but anyway: we need this to go faster, and I wish MS would fix WinForms to make them transparently faster rather than me profiling with despair "yes hum modals will always be a bit slow to redraw 50 controls, we could port to the new stuff but we're not sure it ll get better (but at least we ll benefit from more framework level optim) and it's so different we need a new guy" "then find a new guy", im told, and then every new guy who did some low latency GUI at our level (our app is very optimized but China will decuple volume eventually so...) will tell me he desperately wants out to move to java backend where all the fun is... which I cant deny since that s where I got extracted from urgently when half the .NET team left out of despair to go do Java in other banks lol. I even grew to like .NET even if Ill never wrap my head around the build process and dependency management. Just a wish that MS would continue to optimize winform somehow so I wouldnt have to recode forms doing exactly the same thing. I suppose it s nonsensical since the new paradigm IS the optim but one can whine :D
- int_19h 5y ago
  WinForms sits on top of classic Win32 UI (HWND etc) architecturally, and that's what constrains its performance more than anything else. The way you get more perf is by taking over and rendering everything yourself, like WPF or WinUI does. But you can't do that while maintaining backwards compatibility - stuff like Control.Handle or IWin32Window.

hvidgaard 5y ago

You can run your WinForms application on the latest LTS version of dotnet, .NET6. As always, upgrading to a new version of the framework, means you have to migrate some parts of the codebase, especially from an older .net3-4. That isn't really that different from Java If I'd have candidates that want out from .NET I'd be very intrigued and want to know why. Specifically, I don't want any that want out because the tech was changing rapidly. I can understand the overhead is somewhat annoying, but it's for the better and it seems to be a lot more stable again.

gwbas1c 5y ago
> If I'd have candidates that want out from .NET I'd be very intrigued and want to know why. Every time I change jobs I always try. It's not that I hate .Net, it's just that I want to try something different. .Net is awesome, but it's always useful to see how other languages and platforms do things. For example, compiler enforced null checking in C# is lousy compared to Swift or Rust.
- starik36 5y ago
  In .NET 6, there is new "EnableNullable" directive that will do that. It's on by default for new projects.
  - gwbas1c 5y ago
    It's horrible. For example, it treats Linq's .First() as nullable. (.First() throws an exception, .FirstOrDefault() returns null.) Type.Name is also treated as nullable. I didn't encounter any issues like that when I tried Swift and Rust.
    - Genbox 5y ago
      That is not true. LINQ's First() correctly returns a non-nullable type: https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,11 https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,11 FirstOrDefault() correctly returns a nullable type: https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,33 https://source.dot.net/#System.Linq/System/Linq/First.cs,33 typeof(type).Name is MemberInfo.Name, which is also not nullable: https://source.dot.net/#System.Private.CoreLib/MemberInfo.cs,14 https://source.dot.net/#System.Private.CoreLib/MemberInfo.cs... I checked both .NET 5 and .NET 6. They have identical nullability.

pjmlp 5y ago

We do both stacks, on the backend we have the problem that most shops don't really buy into the whole .NET Core stack for Linux workloads story unless they happen to be Azure shops.

Quarrelsome 5y ago

No idea where this Java elitism is coming from, dotnet and Java are ridiculously similar. I'd do dotnet for you in 2022 if you're willing to pay me more than my current corp with the same benefits, the language/platform is just fine. Winform is also fine its just bad at transparency and most applications that are written using it are poorly written.

pjmlp 5y ago
The usual stuff, Spectrum vs C64, Amiga vs Atari vs PC vs Mac, vi vs Emacs, Pascal vs C, C vs C++, ...... and naturally Java vs .NET, specially given J++ history and its relation to C#.

manigandham 5y ago

There are millions of .NET developers ready and able to do whatever you need. I do find that the market for .NET is very underpaid though compared to the more popular stacks used at FAANG companies. Are you really having that much trouble finding devs?

n8cpdx 5y ago
My group just hired our first .NET dev in years after many interviews. Maybe they’re all working for the big banks. Or maybe all the .NET engineers realized they’re underpaid and have learned other technologies. My own experience is that outside of Azure, .NET has become extremely painful. FWIW, modern .NET and Visual Studio (anywhere other than ASP) is deserving of hazard pay, at the very least to compensate for the mental health cost of Visual Studio’s constant gaslighting. I love my manager and team, but pretty soon I’m going to be telling them that I’m leaving, because .NET (on desktop and mobile) has given me 5+ years of very good reasons to hate it.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  In what concerns the desktop, it has become a mess with the UWP failure, so they are now shoting in all possible directions, unfortunely.