C#, I still love you dearest

http://blog.tnwdevlabs.com/2015/07/01/C%E2%99%AF-I-still-love-you-Dearest/

by charlieflowers • 11 years ago

65 53 11 years ago

blog.tnwdevlabs.com

C# replies: "Honey, I don't mind you dallying with some of those sexy other languages. Just make sure you bring some of the learnings back so you and I can enjoy them together <wink>."

brendanjerwin• 11 years ago

"your special son PowerShell can live with us for as long as he needs, even indefinitely" -- Ha!

sremani• 11 years ago

The Camelcaseness of Powershell might be the reason for this expression, but if you dev on Windows, Powershell is just indispensable.

m_st• 11 years ago

For me it's 10 years. Also with .net 2.0 and the generics through Visual Studio 2005 getting data from SQL Server 2005.

To another 10 years!

moron4hire4• 11 years ago

I was somewhat shocked to recently realize I've been doing both C# and JavaScript since they were invented, so 15 and 20 years respectively. It's... not as awesome as I first thought.

C# has evolved greatly in 15 years. JavaScript is only just now seeing any useful change.

skrowl• 11 years ago

I love C# because MS stack is where the enterprise jobs are (at least in my area).

cmdrfred4• 11 years ago

This is also the reason for my disdain.

archon2• 11 years ago

I don't understand this. A language's popularity with large businesses is enough reason to dislike it?

talles4• 11 years ago

That's not much of a reason to love it, is it?

bkjelden2• 11 years ago

The C# language designers really do a great job maintaining the perfect balance of language features.

C++ allows way to many things and no normal human could ever hope to understand the entire language.

Java went too far the other way - it was so simple you ended up with a lot of boilerplate code (although this has supposedly gotten better since I last wrote much Java in Java 6).

C# gets the mix just right.

joshuapants• 11 years ago

it was so simple you ended up with a lot of boilerplate code

Lately I've been seeing C# as having that same affliction (though not nearly to the same extent). It all started with perusing some F# code samples, then following a few tutorials, and now C# is ruined for me forever.

jimmaswell3• 11 years ago

Shorter or less boilterplate isn't necessarily a good thing. C#'s greater explicitness can make it easier to keep track of what's going on comparatively.

brianbarker• 11 years ago

Now that MS is playing great with Linux, it's hard to justify moving away from C# for common web tasks. My biggest issue was not wanting to deploy Windows servers (for my own projects; my company pays for it without issue).

Credit is due to MS for learning to adapt to demand, not fight it.

earlz2• 11 years ago

For all the shit I give C# (some of my complaints are getting better with everything becoming open source), it's still by far my favorite language. I picked it up when Visual Studio 2008 was relatively new and coming from PHP and C++ (to ASP.Net/C#) was very eye opening and though I had a lot of learning problems because of webforms, the core C# language definitely has me captured.

C# is my "not quick one off" language. When I want a one-off, I use Ruby because it's quick and easy... but when I need more than 1 file and I'll be dealing with lots of classes and complications that come with that, give me C#.

I've tried getting to know Rust, but despite my love for it's core ideas and syntax I just can't get into it for the projects I've had. Most of my projects don't tend to be things where I care about strict memory requirements or ridiculous performance. I mainly just want something that works good enough for my own use.

I also tried Go, but I quickly left that when I found it had no generic support and the community is basically anti-functional constructs, preferring pure procedural stuff instead.

jameshart• 11 years ago

Your reference to 'more than 1 file' resonates with me. One thing C# gets wonderfully right is its approach to spreading code across multiple files. No dogmatic insistence on one class per file like Java; no file-level dependency-graph import/export nonsense; no compile order dependencies; with partial classes I can split code up logically across files if I need to. I can start off and build multiple classes all in one file to get my initial framework and patterns together, then I can refactor those classes out into their own files over time.

swalsh2• 11 years ago

I recently switched to Ruby after writing C# for 8 years. There's a lot I miss, the tooling is best in class, and the language is very well thought through. I might go back some day.

keithly• 11 years ago

Why did you switch?

swalsh2• 11 years ago

I followed my boss to a new company, and Ruby is what they were already using.

Touche2• 11 years ago

If you're in .NET land I have no idea why you would chose C# over F#. F# has ever thing that C# has and more, and does so in a more elegant way.

For example, C# async/await is a compiler hack. In F# it was implemented as a library. This shows how powerful F# is and C# is not.

ianlevesque• 11 years ago

C# tooling is better

miscfuck• 11 years ago

Definitely, why in the hell do my files need to be arranged in compile order, that's absurd.

Zergy2• 11 years ago

Regardless of which language is better the size of the C# talent pool over the F# one would be enough of a reason for project requiring a decently sized team.

keedot• 11 years ago

Familiar and comfortable syntax with C/C++/Obj-C/Java/Swift/Javascript/Typscript/Scala/etc... It's a procedural language, yet adopts functional elements. And the pool of developers is several orders of magnitude more. Your comment reeks of fanboyism.

archon2• 11 years ago

If you're in .NET land I have no idea why you would chose C# over F#.

One of our reasons: The pool of (good) developers who can write C# is already pretty small in our little city. My company has enough trouble finding developers qualified to play with C#. If we switched to F#, our already-slow hiring would grind to a halt.

jimmaswell3• 11 years ago

A functional language is not going to be appropriate for everything, and in F# you have to explicitly do extra work to have mutable state. If you're doing a UI or game C# will probably be a more natural fit. C# probably works better with Intellisense because the types are basically always explicit, whereas you can use type inference in F#. C-style syntax is a lot more comfortable for a lot of people.

billyhoffman• 11 years ago

"JavaScript has the better object model"

This might get downvoted and all but ... I'm not sure how someone who has written C# for 8 years would think this.

I'm not even talking complicated things. Just OO basics like interfaces and abstract classes (with compile time enforcement) are pretty helpful as you evolve a code base.

Touche2• 11 years ago

C#'s object model is so good they created dynamic so that people don't have to use it...

SneakerXZ• 11 years ago

They created dynamic to improve COM interfaces and bridging to other languages.

Zergy2• 11 years ago

Adding a new tool to swiss army knife doesn't indicate the other tools are dysfunctional, it just means that additional functionality was needed.

moron4hire4• 11 years ago

Only people who don't use C# regularly think `dynamic` is something C# programmers use regularly.

talles4• 11 years ago

Oversimplifying things (with a little bias): JavaScript object model is Linq/delegates/reflection (the very best parts of C#) without the hassle.

IMO:

In the lower level architecture it's just more powerful designing functions and data structures to play with each other as you wish (but power is not necessarily a good thing, you can shoot yourself in the foot). You just do it, no need to define all those fancy interfaces, abstract methods, base classes...

In the higher level architecture, sure, you really miss those securities that interfaces and such enforces, JavaScript is amazingly breakable. But, fortunately, JavaScript/Node community modularizes so often (and well), that this is practically not an issue. The modules are well done, tested, there's community input, etc.

recursive5• 11 years ago

without the hassle? I've never experienced the hassle gradient favoring javascript in that regard. Here's one difference. `objects.Sum(x => x.Width)` is C#. Javascript is... `objects.map(function(x) { return x.Width; }).???`

o_nate• 11 years ago

"JavaScript has the better object model" - hard to take anything else he says seriously after reading this, but it was funny.

cmdrfred4• 11 years ago

This is how I feel about Python and Pycharm. .NET feels antiquated to me and the culture of the language (lots of former MBA guys who learned visual basic in excel as a first language) doesn't have the same spirit as Python, Ruby, or Go (or C, C++, or assembly for that matter) but to each his own.

recursive5• 11 years ago

So the reason .net feels antiquated is purely a function of the other people who use it. That sounds like something a Ruby programmer would say. ;)

cmdrfred4• 11 years ago

It's mainly what its used for, if you want to make pretty graphs and keep track of materials at your factory maybe you pull out .net if you want to do something interesting you use pretty much anything else. I know tons of people make a living with it, but I don't understand the passion for the language.

jimmaswell3• 11 years ago

What does any of that have to do with it as a programming language?

rossng• 11 years ago

I think it very much depends on which companies you look at. There's lots of boring stuff done in .NET, but there's also some amazing stuff. The next few months are pretty exciting - I mean, just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6wrpYFHhE

jbeja• 11 years ago

If this by causality u/agleiv2 form Reddit?

hoare• 11 years ago

its a shame that 99% of the startup scene gives you a very strange look if you say you want to do the job in c#:(

douche• 11 years ago

If you're stuck with a shop that transitioned from VB6 to VB.NET, then yeah, .NET sucks, because VB.NET sucks. C# is without a doubt my favorite language. I could probably live with Java, if I could use IntelliJ, although I would miss LINQ and dealing with the "one class, one file" rigidity again. I used to dabble a fair amount in Python - at the time, I was coming from working mostly in C++ or Java (1.4 or 1.5), so Python 2.5 seemed like a breath of fresh air. But the tooling is just not at the same level as exists for C# these days.

The two biggest pillars of my experience developing C# though are ReSharper and NuGet. Resharper is without a doubt the best couple hundred bucks I've spent on programming tools (if only they didn't always seem to release updates seemingly the day after my year of free point releases expires...). And Nuget is the best thing since sliced bread. I don't think I would ever want to go back to trying to manually manage and install third-party libraries the way I used to have to when I was doing Java and C++ ten years ago.

C#, I still love you dearest

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