7 ms·

> Maybe I’m bad at searching for these things, but these changes to C# seem to have gone completely under the radar in places where you read about memory safety

> Maybe I’m bad at searching for these things, but these changes to C# seem to have gone completely under the radar in places where you read about memory safety and performance. Maybe it’s just because the language additions have happened super slowly, or maybe the C# and Rust communities have so little overlap that there aren’t enough people who program in both languages to notice the similarities. If you are looking at this through the lens of HN, I think much of this can be attributed to a certain ideological cargo cult that actively seeks to banish any positive sentiment around effective tools. You see this exact same thing with SQL providers, web frameworks, etc. If the tool is useful but doesn't have some ultra-progressive ecosystem around it (i.e., costs money or was invented before the average HN user's DOB), you can make a winning bet that talking about it will result in negative karma outcomes. Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. But, you won't find a single YC startup that would admit to using it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zdragnar 2y ago
Well, common lisp and some schemes and prolog tend to get a good deal of praise here, even if their commercial utilization is lower. OCaml, F# and Clojure tend to get a good deal of favorable comments as well. I suspect it is less about cargo culting, and more about two separate things: First, the tooling for C# and really anything dotnet has been awful on any OS other than Windows until fairly recently. Windows is (to be blunt) a very unpopular OS in every development community that isn't dotnet. Second, anthing enterprise is worth taking with a skeptical grain of salt; "enterprise" typically gets chosen for commercial support contracts, vendor lock-in, or astronaut architects over-engineering everything to fit best practices from 20 years ago. Saying big businesses run on it is a virtue is akin to saying that Oracle software is amazing or that WordPress engineering is amazing because so many websites run on it. Popularity and quality are entirely orthogonal. I suppose there is probably another reason, which is the cluster fuck that has been the naming and churn of dot net versions for several years. ASP.NET, then core, then the core suffix got dropped at version 5, even though not everything was cross platform... So much pointless confusion.
devjab 2y ago
> Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. I think it depends on location. In my part of the world .Net is something which lives in middle sized often stagnating companies. Enterprise around here is married to the JVM and they even tend to use more Typescript on the backend than C#. I’m not going to defend the merits of that in any way, that is just the way of things. There being said I do get the impression that HN does know that Rust isn’t seeing much adoption as a general purpose language. So I wouldn’t count C# out here considering how excellent it has become since the transition into Core as the main .Net. I say this a an absolute C# hater by the way, I spent a decade with it and I never want to work with it again. (After decades of SWE I have fun with Python, C/Zig, JS/TS, and, no other language.)
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  > Enterprise around here is married to the JVM and they even tend to use more Typescript on the backend than C#. I’m not going to defend the merits of that in any way, that is just the way of things. Many developers already know Java, so it's easier to hire Java developers. >There being said I do get the impression that HN does know that Rust isn’t seeing much adoption as a general purpose language. So I wouldn’t count C# out here considering how excellent it has become since the transition into Core as the main .Net. I say this a an absolute C# hater by the way, I spent a decade with it and I never want to work with it again. (After decades of SWE I have fun with Python, C/Zig, JS/TS, and, no other language.) I didn't like the old C# and .NET. However, the new one is wonderful and I quite enjoy using it. More than Java or Go. On par with Python, but I wouldn't use Python for now for large web backend applications. I tried Rust, bur for some reason I can't grow to like it. I'd prefer using C or Zig and even a sane subset of C++ (if such thing even exists).
  - devjab 2y ago
    I don’t like C# because I don’t like the “magic” which is also what makes it special. In that regard I actually think highly of Go’s more simplistic approach to everything, from explicit error handling to the flat “class hierarchy”. Go isn’t as good as C# for a lot of things and there are no technical reasons for my C# hatred. Well I guess you could argue that having to fight the “magic” when you run into things it can’t handle as technical but for 99% of the things this isn’t an issue. Python is a horrible language, but it’s also the language I actually get things build in. I do think it’s a little underrated for large web apps since Django is a true work horse, but it takes discipline. C is for performance, embedded and Python/Typescript libraries and Zig is basically just better C because of the interoperability. Typescript is similar to Python for me, I probably wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t adopted everywhere, but I do like working with it. We’ve done some Rust pocs but it never really got much traction and nobody really likes it. + I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single Rust job in my area of the world. C/C++ places aren’t adopting it, they are choosing Zig. That is if they’re going away from C/C++ at all.
WD-42 2y ago
I think it has more to do with c# being a Windows only programming language for the majority of its life. And guess what, a lot of people don’t like Windows. And don’t bring up mono, etc. it was a dumpster fire then and it’s only recently gotten better. It tough for any tech to shed a very long negative legacy.
- Kipters 2y ago
  .NET Core 1.0 was released cross-platform 8 years ago though, there's a ton of new devs for who it has always been cross-platform
  - WD-42 2y ago
    And Rust 1.0 (which this article seems to be comparing against) came out 9 years ago. These things take time.
  - palmfacehn 2y ago
    Reading this thread is the first I'm learning of this. Even with the enthusiasm expressed here, I'm still suspicious that there will be incompatibilities. Microsoft has a history of doing things a certain way.
    - sfn42 2y ago
      We use .NET for pretty much everything that doesn't run in a browser, our apps run in Linux containers and devs use windows/Linux/Mac with no issues. GUI libraries might have some potential for improvement but I would reach for C# for any task that didnt strictly require a different language.
    - Kipters 2y ago
      That's your bias and not the language fault, everything works pretty much the same across every OS, I haven't developed non-UI C# apps on Windows since 2018 (because of course you need Windows to build WinUI and WPF apps, but you have options on macOS and Linux too)
DeathArrow 2y ago
I don't get why you are downvoted. It's true that some languages, frameworks, operating systems are more popular on HN that others. Reasons for this might be complex and we might enter into very hard and complicated sociological arguments if we try to discuss them. >Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. What is an enterprise? Is Google not an enterprise? Is Apple not an enterprise? Is Facebook not an enterprise? What about Netflix, Uber and any other big tech company? Weren't all enterprises start-ups at the beginning? Does enterprise mean boring old company established long before the invention of Internet, which does old boring stuff, employs old boring people and use old boring languages? I imagine a grandpa with a long white beard staring at some CRTs with Cobol code and SAP Hana.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  In this context I'd interpret enterprise to mean any company with over 1000 employees that is not what Silicon Valley calls a tech company. So no Apple, Google or Uber, but the notable players of basically every other industry, from A for accommodation or accounting to W for wood paneling. But I wouldn't say their choice of C# is due to them being old and boring. If it was that, they'd use Java (as many do). In my eyes choosing C# signals to me that you do want good technology (again, you could have gone with Java), but want that technology to be predictable and boring. A decent rate of improvement with minimal disruption, and the ability to solve a lot of issues with money instead of hiring (lots of professionally maintained paid libraries in the ecosystem).
Ygg2 2y ago
> ...actively seeks to banish any positive sentiment around effective tools Effective at what? Want GC lang with lots of libraries? Use Java. Want GC free lang with safety? Use Rust. Otherwise just use C. Or C++. For me C# lies in this awkward spot. Because of past decisions it will never have quite the ecosystem of Java. And because GC -free and GC libraries mix as well as water and oil, you get somewhat of a library ecosystem bifurcation. Granted GC-less libraries are almost non-existent.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  I worked in both C# and Java. And other languages. Resuming C# and Java to "GC languages with lots of libraries" doesn't accurately depict neither C#, nor Java. Since we discuss C# here, it is a good jack of all trades language where you can do almost anything, with decent performance, low boilerplate. It's easy to read, easy to learn and you have libraries for everything you need, excellent documentation and plenty of tutorials and examples. A great thing is that for every task and domain there is a good library or framework that most developers use, so you don't have to ask yourself what to use and how and you find a lot of documentation, tutorials and help for everything. Java it's a bit more boiler plate-y, had a bit less features and ease of use and had many libraries and frameworks that did the same thing. Had Java been better, Kotlin wouldn't need to be invented. >Want GC lang with lots of libraries? Use Java. Want a fast to develop and easy to use language? Just use C#. >Want GC free lang with safety? Use Rust. Want a language which you can use for almost eveything? Web front-end, web backend, services, microcontrollers, games, desktop and mobile? Use C#. >Otherwise just use C. Or C++. Or whatever works for you. Whatever you like, find fun and makes you a productive and happy developer. There is nothing wrong in using C or C++. Or Python. Or Haskell.
  - Ygg2 2y ago
    > Since we discuss C# here, it is a good jack of all trades language where you can do almost anything, with decent performance, low boilerplate. That's basically modern-day Java, with Lombok and other tidbits. Furthermore, if I recall correctly, Java has better performance on web benchmarks than C#. > Had Java been better, Kotlin wouldn't need to be invented. Kotlin was invented to make a sugary version of Java, and thus drive more JetBrains sales. It got popular because Oracle got litigious. As someone who's been on the Java train for almost two decades, what usually happens, if any JVM Lang becomes too popular, Java has the tendency to reintegrate its features into itself. > Whatever you like, find fun and makes you a productive and happy developer. There is nothing wrong in using C or C++. Or Python. Or Haskell. Sure, assuming it fits the domain. Like, don't use Python for kernel dev or Java for some obscure ML/AI when you could use Python.
DeathArrow 2y ago
> Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. But, you won't find a single YC startup that would admit to using it. Not sure about that. Maybe there are? If you do web or mobile apps, C# would be an excellent choice. Go would be also an excellent choice for web. For AI I wouldn't use C#. Even though it has excellent ML libraries, most research and popular stuff is done using Python and pytorch, so that's what I would chose. For very low level, I'd take C or Zig. But I don't know many startups who are into very low level stuff.
jeroenhd 2y ago
C# is an incredible language with a past haunted by Microsoft only making it useful on Windows and expensive licenses for really good editors. It's come a long way, but I don't blame people for thinking of it as "Microsoft Java". My only issue with many of the improvements in C# is that all of them are optional for backwards compatibility reasons. People who don't know or don't care about new language features can still write C# like it's 2004 and all of the advantages of trying to modernize go out of the window. That means that developers often don't see the need to learn any of the new features, which makes it hard for projects to take advantage of the language improvements.
- alkonaut 2y ago
  Hard agree on the backwards compatibility. It appears to be some law of nature that "our next compiler must compile 20 year old code". Instead of new platform libs and compilers simply defaulting to some reasonable cutoff date and saying "You need to install an ancient compiler to build this". There is nothing that prevents me from building my old project with an older set of tools. If I want to make use of newer features then I'm happy to continuously update my source code.
  - Clubber 2y ago
    >It appears to be some law of nature that "our next compiler must compile 20 year old code". Some examples of companies/products not implementing backwards compatibility are Delphi and Angular. Both are effectively dead. .NET Core wasn't backwards compatible with .NET Framework, but MS created .NET Standard to bridge that gap. .NET Standard allows people to write code in .NET core and will run in .NET Framework. It's not perfect, but apparently it was good enough. Companies usually won't knowingly adopt a technology that will be obsoleted in the future and require a complete rewrite. That's a disaster.
    - alkonaut 2y ago
      But that's .NET, not C#. Language and platforms are different. Libraries must be compatible (because you don't know if your library will be consumed in a newer app). But the compiler only consumes syntax (C#11, C#12 C#13 and so on) so I don't see why the compiler that eats C#13 necessarily must swallow C#5 without modification
johnisgood 2y ago
Yeah, or you think Ada / SPARK ever comes up when people cry for memory safety? It has existed in Ada / SPARK for ages, but nah...
failbuffer 2y ago
Alternatively (or at least additively), most C# developers don't really need all the new ref/Span features. They're writing line-of-business apps and garbage collection is a fact of life, not some burden to be avoided. Microsoft probably added these features to push the language into new niches (like improving the story around Unity and going after Arduino/IoT). But it's of little practical appeal to their established base.
- Dykam 2y ago
  As far as I'm aware, it's the development of Kestrel which pushed the introduction of ref/Span etc. Due to it Kestrel has seen quite a large speedup, it being one of the fastest HTTP servers nowadays. ref/Span allowed them to make the core almost allocation free, together with using vectorized operations (SIMD ) for parsing the request.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

zdragnar 2y ago

Well, common lisp and some schemes and prolog tend to get a good deal of praise here, even if their commercial utilization is lower. OCaml, F# and Clojure tend to get a good deal of favorable comments as well. I suspect it is less about cargo culting, and more about two separate things: First, the tooling for C# and really anything dotnet has been awful on any OS other than Windows until fairly recently. Windows is (to be blunt) a very unpopular OS in every development community that isn't dotnet. Second, anthing enterprise is worth taking with a skeptical grain of salt; "enterprise" typically gets chosen for commercial support contracts, vendor lock-in, or astronaut architects over-engineering everything to fit best practices from 20 years ago. Saying big businesses run on it is a virtue is akin to saying that Oracle software is amazing or that WordPress engineering is amazing because so many websites run on it. Popularity and quality are entirely orthogonal. I suppose there is probably another reason, which is the cluster fuck that has been the naming and churn of dot net versions for several years. ASP.NET, then core, then the core suffix got dropped at version 5, even though not everything was cross platform... So much pointless confusion.

devjab 2y ago

> Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. I think it depends on location. In my part of the world .Net is something which lives in middle sized often stagnating companies. Enterprise around here is married to the JVM and they even tend to use more Typescript on the backend than C#. I’m not going to defend the merits of that in any way, that is just the way of things. There being said I do get the impression that HN does know that Rust isn’t seeing much adoption as a general purpose language. So I wouldn’t count C# out here considering how excellent it has become since the transition into Core as the main .Net. I say this a an absolute C# hater by the way, I spent a decade with it and I never want to work with it again. (After decades of SWE I have fun with Python, C/Zig, JS/TS, and, no other language.)

DeathArrow 2y ago
> Enterprise around here is married to the JVM and they even tend to use more Typescript on the backend than C#. I’m not going to defend the merits of that in any way, that is just the way of things. Many developers already know Java, so it's easier to hire Java developers. >There being said I do get the impression that HN does know that Rust isn’t seeing much adoption as a general purpose language. So I wouldn’t count C# out here considering how excellent it has become since the transition into Core as the main .Net. I say this a an absolute C# hater by the way, I spent a decade with it and I never want to work with it again. (After decades of SWE I have fun with Python, C/Zig, JS/TS, and, no other language.) I didn't like the old C# and .NET. However, the new one is wonderful and I quite enjoy using it. More than Java or Go. On par with Python, but I wouldn't use Python for now for large web backend applications. I tried Rust, bur for some reason I can't grow to like it. I'd prefer using C or Zig and even a sane subset of C++ (if such thing even exists).
- devjab 2y ago
  I don’t like C# because I don’t like the “magic” which is also what makes it special. In that regard I actually think highly of Go’s more simplistic approach to everything, from explicit error handling to the flat “class hierarchy”. Go isn’t as good as C# for a lot of things and there are no technical reasons for my C# hatred. Well I guess you could argue that having to fight the “magic” when you run into things it can’t handle as technical but for 99% of the things this isn’t an issue. Python is a horrible language, but it’s also the language I actually get things build in. I do think it’s a little underrated for large web apps since Django is a true work horse, but it takes discipline. C is for performance, embedded and Python/Typescript libraries and Zig is basically just better C because of the interoperability. Typescript is similar to Python for me, I probably wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t adopted everywhere, but I do like working with it. We’ve done some Rust pocs but it never really got much traction and nobody really likes it. + I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single Rust job in my area of the world. C/C++ places aren’t adopting it, they are choosing Zig. That is if they’re going away from C/C++ at all.

WD-42 2y ago

I think it has more to do with c# being a Windows only programming language for the majority of its life. And guess what, a lot of people don’t like Windows. And don’t bring up mono, etc. it was a dumpster fire then and it’s only recently gotten better. It tough for any tech to shed a very long negative legacy.

Kipters 2y ago
.NET Core 1.0 was released cross-platform 8 years ago though, there's a ton of new devs for who it has always been cross-platform
- WD-42 2y ago
  And Rust 1.0 (which this article seems to be comparing against) came out 9 years ago. These things take time.
- palmfacehn 2y ago
  Reading this thread is the first I'm learning of this. Even with the enthusiasm expressed here, I'm still suspicious that there will be incompatibilities. Microsoft has a history of doing things a certain way.
  - sfn42 2y ago
    We use .NET for pretty much everything that doesn't run in a browser, our apps run in Linux containers and devs use windows/Linux/Mac with no issues. GUI libraries might have some potential for improvement but I would reach for C# for any task that didnt strictly require a different language.
  - Kipters 2y ago
    That's your bias and not the language fault, everything works pretty much the same across every OS, I haven't developed non-UI C# apps on Windows since 2018 (because of course you need Windows to build WinUI and WPF apps, but you have options on macOS and Linux too)

DeathArrow 2y ago

I don't get why you are downvoted. It's true that some languages, frameworks, operating systems are more popular on HN that others. Reasons for this might be complex and we might enter into very hard and complicated sociological arguments if we try to discuss them. >Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. What is an enterprise? Is Google not an enterprise? Is Apple not an enterprise? Is Facebook not an enterprise? What about Netflix, Uber and any other big tech company? Weren't all enterprises start-ups at the beginning? Does enterprise mean boring old company established long before the invention of Internet, which does old boring stuff, employs old boring people and use old boring languages? I imagine a grandpa with a long white beard staring at some CRTs with Cobol code and SAP Hana.

wongarsu 2y ago
In this context I'd interpret enterprise to mean any company with over 1000 employees that is not what Silicon Valley calls a tech company. So no Apple, Google or Uber, but the notable players of basically every other industry, from A for accommodation or accounting to W for wood paneling. But I wouldn't say their choice of C# is due to them being old and boring. If it was that, they'd use Java (as many do). In my eyes choosing C# signals to me that you do want good technology (again, you could have gone with Java), but want that technology to be predictable and boring. A decent rate of improvement with minimal disruption, and the ability to solve a lot of issues with money instead of hiring (lots of professionally maintained paid libraries in the ecosystem).

Ygg2 2y ago

> ...actively seeks to banish any positive sentiment around effective tools Effective at what? Want GC lang with lots of libraries? Use Java. Want GC free lang with safety? Use Rust. Otherwise just use C. Or C++. For me C# lies in this awkward spot. Because of past decisions it will never have quite the ecosystem of Java. And because GC -free and GC libraries mix as well as water and oil, you get somewhat of a library ecosystem bifurcation. Granted GC-less libraries are almost non-existent.

DeathArrow 2y ago
I worked in both C# and Java. And other languages. Resuming C# and Java to "GC languages with lots of libraries" doesn't accurately depict neither C#, nor Java. Since we discuss C# here, it is a good jack of all trades language where you can do almost anything, with decent performance, low boilerplate. It's easy to read, easy to learn and you have libraries for everything you need, excellent documentation and plenty of tutorials and examples. A great thing is that for every task and domain there is a good library or framework that most developers use, so you don't have to ask yourself what to use and how and you find a lot of documentation, tutorials and help for everything. Java it's a bit more boiler plate-y, had a bit less features and ease of use and had many libraries and frameworks that did the same thing. Had Java been better, Kotlin wouldn't need to be invented. >Want GC lang with lots of libraries? Use Java. Want a fast to develop and easy to use language? Just use C#. >Want GC free lang with safety? Use Rust. Want a language which you can use for almost eveything? Web front-end, web backend, services, microcontrollers, games, desktop and mobile? Use C#. >Otherwise just use C. Or C++. Or whatever works for you. Whatever you like, find fun and makes you a productive and happy developer. There is nothing wrong in using C or C++. Or Python. Or Haskell.
- Ygg2 2y ago
  > Since we discuss C# here, it is a good jack of all trades language where you can do almost anything, with decent performance, low boilerplate. That's basically modern-day Java, with Lombok and other tidbits. Furthermore, if I recall correctly, Java has better performance on web benchmarks than C#. > Had Java been better, Kotlin wouldn't need to be invented. Kotlin was invented to make a sugary version of Java, and thus drive more JetBrains sales. It got popular because Oracle got litigious. As someone who's been on the Java train for almost two decades, what usually happens, if any JVM Lang becomes too popular, Java has the tendency to reintegrate its features into itself. > Whatever you like, find fun and makes you a productive and happy developer. There is nothing wrong in using C or C++. Or Python. Or Haskell. Sure, assuming it fits the domain. Like, don't use Python for kernel dev or Java for some obscure ML/AI when you could use Python.

DeathArrow 2y ago

> Everyone working in enterprise software development has known about the power of this language for well over a decade. But, you won't find a single YC startup that would admit to using it. Not sure about that. Maybe there are? If you do web or mobile apps, C# would be an excellent choice. Go would be also an excellent choice for web. For AI I wouldn't use C#. Even though it has excellent ML libraries, most research and popular stuff is done using Python and pytorch, so that's what I would chose. For very low level, I'd take C or Zig. But I don't know many startups who are into very low level stuff.

jeroenhd 2y ago

C# is an incredible language with a past haunted by Microsoft only making it useful on Windows and expensive licenses for really good editors. It's come a long way, but I don't blame people for thinking of it as "Microsoft Java". My only issue with many of the improvements in C# is that all of them are optional for backwards compatibility reasons. People who don't know or don't care about new language features can still write C# like it's 2004 and all of the advantages of trying to modernize go out of the window. That means that developers often don't see the need to learn any of the new features, which makes it hard for projects to take advantage of the language improvements.

alkonaut 2y ago
Hard agree on the backwards compatibility. It appears to be some law of nature that "our next compiler must compile 20 year old code". Instead of new platform libs and compilers simply defaulting to some reasonable cutoff date and saying "You need to install an ancient compiler to build this". There is nothing that prevents me from building my old project with an older set of tools. If I want to make use of newer features then I'm happy to continuously update my source code.
- Clubber 2y ago
  >It appears to be some law of nature that "our next compiler must compile 20 year old code". Some examples of companies/products not implementing backwards compatibility are Delphi and Angular. Both are effectively dead. .NET Core wasn't backwards compatible with .NET Framework, but MS created .NET Standard to bridge that gap. .NET Standard allows people to write code in .NET core and will run in .NET Framework. It's not perfect, but apparently it was good enough. Companies usually won't knowingly adopt a technology that will be obsoleted in the future and require a complete rewrite. That's a disaster.
  - alkonaut 2y ago
    But that's .NET, not C#. Language and platforms are different. Libraries must be compatible (because you don't know if your library will be consumed in a newer app). But the compiler only consumes syntax (C#11, C#12 C#13 and so on) so I don't see why the compiler that eats C#13 necessarily must swallow C#5 without modification

johnisgood 2y ago

Yeah, or you think Ada / SPARK ever comes up when people cry for memory safety? It has existed in Ada / SPARK for ages, but nah...

failbuffer 2y ago

Alternatively (or at least additively), most C# developers don't really need all the new ref/Span features. They're writing line-of-business apps and garbage collection is a fact of life, not some burden to be avoided. Microsoft probably added these features to push the language into new niches (like improving the story around Unity and going after Arduino/IoT). But it's of little practical appeal to their established base.

Dykam 2y ago
As far as I'm aware, it's the development of Kestrel which pushed the introduction of ref/Span etc. Due to it Kestrel has seen quite a large speedup, it being one of the fastest HTTP servers nowadays. ref/Span allowed them to make the core almost allocation free, together with using vectorized operations (SIMD ) for parsing the request.