7 ms·

I just jumped on the .NET Core gravy train after 6+ years of Ruby on Rails development. I feel so productive and confident working with .NET. Ill be riding this

I just jumped on the .NET Core gravy train after 6+ years of Ruby on Rails development. I feel so productive and confident working with .NET. Ill be riding this rollercoaster with you for a while!

Akronymus 4y ago
Technically it isn't .net core anymore, but just .net. The many different versions were quite confusing. I am happy that they are now unified.
- billpg 4y ago
  Old .net has become ".net framework". I'm just glad the number-space has been sorted out. It was annoying to learn that ".NET 2", ".NET Standard 2" and ".NET Core 2" are very different things.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    > Old .net has become ".net framework". From my understanding, thats not quite right. AFAIK framework was adapted to differentiate it from standard, core and mono.
    - hermitdev 4y ago
      It's really too bad the naming/versioning has gotten so confused. I used to be a heavy .Net user, then stepped away for a while when I changed jobs. Every time I try and come back, I get so confused. Am I looking at the right docs? Is this API available for the platform I'm on? It's bad enough with .Net, itself, but what about GUI libs? What's even supported anymore? What's actually stable and not in pre-release? It's a shame, because .Net is damn good, but the messaging around it has been awful in my experience.
      - tartoran 4y ago
        Yes, big poop show on naming convention changes done terribly. Eventually the dirt will settle and become easier to navigate if it hasn’t started already.
      - zasdffaa 4y ago
        Christ, the mess that are the docs. And the complexity. Just lost well over an hour trying to get a non-trivial regex working (that would have taken me 30 secs in emacs). Gave up and just used split() and it just worked. Never again, I swear.
        custard42 4y ago
        What was the problem -- the regex pattern, or some API?
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        Capture pattern [edit: I meant capture brackets] extraction. Could get one of them (?!) or nothing at all, but... never again. MS doc examples = no success, not SO, not various blogs.
        Akronymus 4y ago
        > Christ, the mess that are the docs. You don't love getting 404s almost all the time?
        octopoc 4y ago
        Might want to check out RegexStorm [1]. It's a .NET regex tester in your browser. Yeah the docs are great but there's nothing like instant feedback to test your regex. [1] http://regexstorm.net/tester http://regexstorm.net/tester
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        Thanks but regexes I know pretty well, the regex object docs just were horrible.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      Old .NET was always ".NET Framework". Microsoft had many years of branding advice early in .NET history that it was never to be called just .NET because their branding teams were using that as a wider initiative that included other things. Most of those other things died or were rebranded and .NET Framework was the last one standing. .NET 5 was the first ever "just .NET", technically from a historical perspective.
    - mbesto 4y ago
      .NET's terminology is as clear as mud: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51390971/im-lost-what-happened-to-asp-net-mvc-5/51391202#51391202 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51390971/im-lost-what-ha...
register 4y ago
I have been a long time "enterprise languages" developer. First Java/J2EE then .NET in the last 10+ years. I already felt that moving to .NET was a jump forward with respect to J2EE but have always been curios about startup languages/stacks like Ruby and Clojure. Lately I was much tempted to do some side project on Rails because I find the Hotwire/Nojavascript trend very reasonable for a lot of real use cases . How do you compare modern Rails with modern .NET?
- lovetocode 4y ago
  I haven't worked with Rails since Rails 5 so I dont know if I could do a fair comparison of how they are as it stands today. Check one of the comment replies above where I outlined some of my thoughts in a similar question.
imafish 4y ago
Any interest in doing a short comparison? As in, why are you in no rush to switch back to rails? Any features you miss from rails? (edit: register beat me to it. I'll leave my post as a +1)
- lovetocode 4y ago
  For the most part, I think there is a lot of feature parity between the .NET and Ruby on Rails frameworks when it comes to developer tooling. As I grow older I guess I am growing more fond of statically typed languages. It's easier for my decaying/distracted brain to reason about. There is less mental overhead I suppose [might be a good blog post?] They both have a good database migration system and various generators for scaffolding views, controllers, etc. To be fair I believe Entity Framework does most of the work for the .NET side on the database developer tooling but I just consider it part of the .NET ecosystem since it seems to be the go-to ORM/database tooling library. I want to be fair to Rails -- I really think they set the bar very high for other frameworks. Productivity w/ Rails was unprecedented when it first came out. I started during the Rails 3 to 4 upgrade. Both ecosystems have easy access to outside libraries using Nuget/Gemfile. So pulling in a background processor like Sidekiq [Ruby] or Hangfire [C#] is fairly easy. Cross platform support is acceptable across both frameworks as well. I can setup an EC2 instance and run both Rails and .NET applications side-by-side. So deployments are going to be similar but I would argue that .NET has the upper-hand because it can deploy do a self-contained deploy so you don't have to worry about installing dotnet in the deployment environment. I am using Blazor Server and I am not going to say something drastic like it will kill React but it is pretty awesome. I can build my entire web experience with C# but with Rails I have to introduce React when I sometimes dont want to. Blazor prevents me from having to write HTTP code from my front to backend systems and as an indie developer that is a godsend. Both have gorgeous documentation -- I thought Rails was good and thorough but .NET ate their lunch.
  - theonething 4y ago
    > with Rails I have to introduce React Do you know about Hotwire? It's Rail's html over the wire solution and seems comparable to Blazor.
kirse 4y ago
If you're on that .NET train check this out as well, keep it on the DL though https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/why-use-fsharp/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/why-use-fsharp/
- lovetocode 4y ago
  Thank you -- I have heard of fsharp but wasn't really familiar with the answer to the question of why use it?
  - belmont_sup 4y ago
    The benefits of tools built into the functional programming world with complete access to all C# libraries. But it's hard to convince a C# dev to use F# when they're so comfortable and see no obvious need to switch.
- EddySchauHai 4y ago
  My friend works at an F# consultancy - from what I’ve heard it’s definitely growing in popularity! I used it for some windows profiling in 2020 which was pretty cool too, albeit only really a single script.
TillE 4y ago
C# is such a cozy language, anyone familiar with C++ or Java can instantly bang out half-decent code, and there's a ton of great features to gradually learn and use. And the performance is about as good as it gets for a language with garbage collection. Big fan.
- orthoxerox 4y ago
  And ASP.Net Core is an insanely fast web framework. It beats every other major framework written in a managed language by a mile. There's no way your backend will outgrow it if your workload isn't RAM-limited.
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    > And ASP.Net Core is an insanely fast web framework. It beats every other major framework written in a managed language by a mile* * In synthetic benchmarks
    - gregmac 4y ago
      Ok, but how else do you compare two frameworks? The only other real way is to write two programs that do the same thing in both. You need to put in the same degree of runtime/environment-specific optimizations (which, notably, will result in different code), but except for in trivially simple applications (eg: "TODO app") which are arguably also "synthetic", the optimizations are always going to leave room for debate.
    - neonsunset 4y ago
      It produces best performance OOB with minimal API way of registering your endpoints. Which is expected to be the default way for many newcomers to the framework. On 5800X, hello world with some logic and cached JSON output (not raw bytes but actual response object so no cheating) produces over 4GB/sec when benchmarked over localhost on .NET 7. Host: https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/767cb0693c3ff222f78b236c9904a3fc https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/767cb0693c3ff222f78b236c... HTTP Benchmark: https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/d936e54bfec1031d1628c338be4a7f5d https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/d936e54bfec1031d1628c338...
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
I'm glad for you, but ActiveRecord is still the best ORM of all time. OF ALL TIME. I rewrote one of my main Rails applications in .NET, and trying to use Entity Framework was like pulling teeth for me, in comparison.
- echelon 4y ago
  I'm glad it works for you. It gave my team years of headache while we ported it all to jOOQ. Also our Ruby engineers liked the flexibility so much that they exposed our entire database as a service to customers, which we had to emulate and support. Two sides to every position.
  - pianoben 4y ago
    Amen to that. We had a high-level engineer who sincerely believed that Rails and Postgres were the right tools for Everything. Consequently he shipped a mission-critical query engine whose API is - you guessed it - just ActiveRecord! It's great if your users are disciplined and experienced Rails engineers who understand how the system works, but we don't live in fantasy land and a year later, we are so very constrained by the unlimited DB access that we're rewriting it all and leaving ActiveRecord out of the equation. I'll always maintain that Rails is the first tool I'd reach for in a new web startup, and the first one I'd discard after growing past ~20 engineers.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      > It's great if your users are disciplined and experienced Rails engineers who understand how the system works. I'm continuously shocked at how much bad ActiveRecord code there is lying around given that it's so easy to just look at the SQL it generates and be like "yeah this looks reasonable". WHY SPONGEBOB WHY!?! Why do you pass around your relations making all of ActiveRecord part of your external API? It's so hard to do stupid things with AR if you pretend that AR objects can't leave the scope they were fetched in.
      - jen20 4y ago

I just jumped on the .NET Core gravy train after 6+ years of Ruby on Rails development. I feel so productive and confident working with .NET. Ill be riding this rollercoaster with you for a while!

Akronymus 4y ago

Technically it isn't .net core anymore, but just .net. The many different versions were quite confusing. I am happy that they are now unified.

billpg 4y ago
Old .net has become ".net framework". I'm just glad the number-space has been sorted out. It was annoying to learn that ".NET 2", ".NET Standard 2" and ".NET Core 2" are very different things.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  > Old .net has become ".net framework". From my understanding, thats not quite right. AFAIK framework was adapted to differentiate it from standard, core and mono.
  - hermitdev 4y ago
    It's really too bad the naming/versioning has gotten so confused. I used to be a heavy .Net user, then stepped away for a while when I changed jobs. Every time I try and come back, I get so confused. Am I looking at the right docs? Is this API available for the platform I'm on? It's bad enough with .Net, itself, but what about GUI libs? What's even supported anymore? What's actually stable and not in pre-release? It's a shame, because .Net is damn good, but the messaging around it has been awful in my experience.
    - tartoran 4y ago
      Yes, big poop show on naming convention changes done terribly. Eventually the dirt will settle and become easier to navigate if it hasn’t started already.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      Christ, the mess that are the docs. And the complexity. Just lost well over an hour trying to get a non-trivial regex working (that would have taken me 30 secs in emacs). Gave up and just used split() and it just worked. Never again, I swear.
      - custard42 4y ago
        What was the problem -- the regex pattern, or some API?
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        Capture pattern [edit: I meant capture brackets] extraction. Could get one of them (?!) or nothing at all, but... never again. MS doc examples = no success, not SO, not various blogs.
      - Akronymus 4y ago
        > Christ, the mess that are the docs. You don't love getting 404s almost all the time?
      - octopoc 4y ago
        Might want to check out RegexStorm [1]. It's a .NET regex tester in your browser. Yeah the docs are great but there's nothing like instant feedback to test your regex. [1] http://regexstorm.net/tester http://regexstorm.net/tester
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        Thanks but regexes I know pretty well, the regex object docs just were horrible.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Old .NET was always ".NET Framework". Microsoft had many years of branding advice early in .NET history that it was never to be called just .NET because their branding teams were using that as a wider initiative that included other things. Most of those other things died or were rebranded and .NET Framework was the last one standing. .NET 5 was the first ever "just .NET", technically from a historical perspective.
  - mbesto 4y ago
    .NET's terminology is as clear as mud: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51390971/im-lost-what-happened-to-asp-net-mvc-5/51391202#51391202 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51390971/im-lost-what-ha...

I have been a long time "enterprise languages" developer. First Java/J2EE then .NET in the last 10+ years. I already felt that moving to .NET was a jump forward with respect to J2EE but have always been curios about startup languages/stacks like Ruby and Clojure. Lately I was much tempted to do some side project on Rails because I find the Hotwire/Nojavascript trend very reasonable for a lot of real use cases . How do you compare modern Rails with modern .NET?

lovetocode 4y ago
I haven't worked with Rails since Rails 5 so I dont know if I could do a fair comparison of how they are as it stands today. Check one of the comment replies above where I outlined some of my thoughts in a similar question.

imafish 4y ago

Any interest in doing a short comparison? As in, why are you in no rush to switch back to rails? Any features you miss from rails? (edit: register beat me to it. I'll leave my post as a +1)

lovetocode 4y ago
For the most part, I think there is a lot of feature parity between the .NET and Ruby on Rails frameworks when it comes to developer tooling. As I grow older I guess I am growing more fond of statically typed languages. It's easier for my decaying/distracted brain to reason about. There is less mental overhead I suppose [might be a good blog post?] They both have a good database migration system and various generators for scaffolding views, controllers, etc. To be fair I believe Entity Framework does most of the work for the .NET side on the database developer tooling but I just consider it part of the .NET ecosystem since it seems to be the go-to ORM/database tooling library. I want to be fair to Rails -- I really think they set the bar very high for other frameworks. Productivity w/ Rails was unprecedented when it first came out. I started during the Rails 3 to 4 upgrade. Both ecosystems have easy access to outside libraries using Nuget/Gemfile. So pulling in a background processor like Sidekiq [Ruby] or Hangfire [C#] is fairly easy. Cross platform support is acceptable across both frameworks as well. I can setup an EC2 instance and run both Rails and .NET applications side-by-side. So deployments are going to be similar but I would argue that .NET has the upper-hand because it can deploy do a self-contained deploy so you don't have to worry about installing dotnet in the deployment environment. I am using Blazor Server and I am not going to say something drastic like it will kill React but it is pretty awesome. I can build my entire web experience with C# but with Rails I have to introduce React when I sometimes dont want to. Blazor prevents me from having to write HTTP code from my front to backend systems and as an indie developer that is a godsend. Both have gorgeous documentation -- I thought Rails was good and thorough but .NET ate their lunch.
- theonething 4y ago
  > with Rails I have to introduce React Do you know about Hotwire? It's Rail's html over the wire solution and seems comparable to Blazor.

kirse 4y ago

If you're on that .NET train check this out as well, keep it on the DL though https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/why-use-fsharp/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/why-use-fsharp/

lovetocode 4y ago
Thank you -- I have heard of fsharp but wasn't really familiar with the answer to the question of why use it?
- belmont_sup 4y ago
  The benefits of tools built into the functional programming world with complete access to all C# libraries. But it's hard to convince a C# dev to use F# when they're so comfortable and see no obvious need to switch.
EddySchauHai 4y ago
My friend works at an F# consultancy - from what I’ve heard it’s definitely growing in popularity! I used it for some windows profiling in 2020 which was pretty cool too, albeit only really a single script.

TillE 4y ago

C# is such a cozy language, anyone familiar with C++ or Java can instantly bang out half-decent code, and there's a ton of great features to gradually learn and use. And the performance is about as good as it gets for a language with garbage collection. Big fan.

orthoxerox 4y ago
And ASP.Net Core is an insanely fast web framework. It beats every other major framework written in a managed language by a mile. There's no way your backend will outgrow it if your workload isn't RAM-limited.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > And ASP.Net Core is an insanely fast web framework. It beats every other major framework written in a managed language by a mile* * In synthetic benchmarks
  - gregmac 4y ago
    Ok, but how else do you compare two frameworks? The only other real way is to write two programs that do the same thing in both. You need to put in the same degree of runtime/environment-specific optimizations (which, notably, will result in different code), but except for in trivially simple applications (eg: "TODO app") which are arguably also "synthetic", the optimizations are always going to leave room for debate.
  - neonsunset 4y ago
    It produces best performance OOB with minimal API way of registering your endpoints. Which is expected to be the default way for many newcomers to the framework. On 5800X, hello world with some logic and cached JSON output (not raw bytes but actual response object so no cheating) produces over 4GB/sec when benchmarked over localhost on .NET 7. Host: https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/767cb0693c3ff222f78b236c9904a3fc https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/767cb0693c3ff222f78b236c... HTTP Benchmark: https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/d936e54bfec1031d1628c338be4a7f5d https://gist.github.com/neon-sunset/d936e54bfec1031d1628c338...

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

I'm glad for you, but ActiveRecord is still the best ORM of all time. OF ALL TIME. I rewrote one of my main Rails applications in .NET, and trying to use Entity Framework was like pulling teeth for me, in comparison.

echelon 4y ago
I'm glad it works for you. It gave my team years of headache while we ported it all to jOOQ. Also our Ruby engineers liked the flexibility so much that they exposed our entire database as a service to customers, which we had to emulate and support. Two sides to every position.
- pianoben 4y ago
  Amen to that. We had a high-level engineer who sincerely believed that Rails and Postgres were the right tools for Everything. Consequently he shipped a mission-critical query engine whose API is - you guessed it - just ActiveRecord! It's great if your users are disciplined and experienced Rails engineers who understand how the system works, but we don't live in fantasy land and a year later, we are so very constrained by the unlimited DB access that we're rewriting it all and leaving ActiveRecord out of the equation. I'll always maintain that Rails is the first tool I'd reach for in a new web startup, and the first one I'd discard after growing past ~20 engineers.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > It's great if your users are disciplined and experienced Rails engineers who understand how the system works. I'm continuously shocked at how much bad ActiveRecord code there is lying around given that it's so easy to just look at the SQL it generates and be like "yeah this looks reasonable". WHY SPONGEBOB WHY!?! Why do you pass around your relations making all of ActiveRecord part of your external API? It's so hard to do stupid things with AR if you pretend that AR objects can't leave the scope they were fetched in.
    - jen20 4y ago