Milestone: Half a million downloads for VideoLAN packages in the .NET ecosystem (opens in new tab)

I was a Linux/Mac only power user until my first role as a software engineer, where my employer was a Windows and .NET shop (the .NET 1.1/2.0/3.5 days).

Hadn’t used Windows in years and that was my first exposure to PowerShell, which made me feel a little better about Windows.

Grew to greatly appreciate C# and .NET over the years and am now fairly optimistic that Microsoft has made a lasting change after seeing the steady, dramatic improvements that they’ve been making technologically and sociologically (embracing open source, cross-platform support, and putting their money where their mouth is).

Highly recommend that curious people install Windows 10 on an external HDD to try out WSL, Windows Terminal, and PowerToys Fancy Zones. I use Linux for my personal machines, still, but Fancy Zones has honestly had me missing the ease of desktop layout when I switch off my work machine.

Or, if you are just looking to explore C# and the dotnet ecosystem, then you can do that from the command line on most non-BSD operating systems.

I actually just picked up .NET when 5 came out and have been working on a project and have been blown away how great not only is the ASP.NET Core framework but also the C# language.

Powerful, consistent, feature-rich. Coming from a python, java, web background, was really blown away. Wish more people would give .NET a chance. It isn't like it used to be when I first tried it in College and hated it.

I don't think there's hatred for the ecosystem, it's just one that you don't get to see unless you're exposed to it by chance or pushed into it for a specific reason.

.NET is in the corporate world but you'll have a harder time finding a .NET-related job if you don't already know stuff about it.

Since I don't currently use windows and I don't casually want to build a corporate type of software on another system in my free time (I'd much rather fold some origami, I'm likely one of the people that aren't called "passionate" about dev), I didn't get to be exposed to it easily - unlike "typical" web and mobile-related languages for example (Java, Obj-C/Swift, JS). Some of it might have been shown when I was a student (Java), and other things are just requirements of the times (I want to try making a mobile app -> either web or native languages). Didn't see .NET at university, and early jobs didn't involve that, so now it feels like a missed train somehow.

Is it worth focusing on when you're not already living in that ecosystem and you're on your own?

I have a rather dumb question about C#.

A skillion years ago I had to do a .NET project and somewhat randomly chose VB.NET as the language over C#. However, I did buy some C# books which I never looked at. Given that the books are now about a decade old, is there any point in keeping them? Has C# changed enough in the years that the language is sufficiently different from what was created in the book that I might as well pick up a newer volume?

I tend to gravitate toward stability in languages. Something of a flaw of mine.

Similar experience here. I switched OSes a few times but I never let go C# even when the multiplatform story was subpar. Now with dotnet core (.net 5) it’s really a joy to work with everywhere (even of VS Code is no match to the real thing).

Agree, when it comes to desktop development (WinForms, WPF). But once I saw some Web API stuff, there is just too much of a ceremony and boilerplate, no?

The documentation is the best feature of the entire platform. If Microsoft hadn't published that deep-dive document regarding Blazor hosting models [1], I probably would have not given the technology a deeper look. But, after reading through and comparing the pros/cons of server-side vs client-side, it made it very clear to me that this was an approach that would be a really good fit for us (we went with the server-side model).

My 2nd favorite feature is Self-Contained Deployments [2]. We skipped the whole containerization party because this approach completely obviated our need for such things.

Beyond that, being able to seamlessly transition between imperative & functional members within the same type, pattern matching in switch statements [3], on-going awesomeness of LINQ, etc. Really great stuff to work with.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/blazor/hosting-...

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/#publ...

[3] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/pattern-match...

Not a new company but rebooting an existing and am using .net. Being able to run on Google Cloud Run is awesome.

FYI it's simply called .NET now, as of the release of .NET 5. Which is the successor to .NET Core 3.1.

Yes the big stdlib is the secret sauce. c# is great but the framework offers so much. Imagine taking a non trivial 5 year old javascript project and upgrading it .. but with .NET that is well written to use the framework features it's often quite achievable. I've upgraded a number recently and mostly it's been quick and successful. Because of the sensible stdlib!

To the contrary, I think it makes the code easier to understand. The syntactic sugar that gets added to C# is almost universally driven through studying extant usage and codifying common patterns. Instead of jumping through flaming hoops of boilerplate code to make, say, asynchronous network requests work, there is now a specific syntax for sequencing asynchronous calls that keeps related code more closely related in the source.

Specific syntax for patterns makes intention more clear, and shifts responsibility for getting it right from the developer to the compiler.

I'm with you on the terseness. I've been finding myself asking people to be "clear, not clever" with usage of some of the sugar, whereas previously adopting new syntax hasn't been so much of a challenge. It's definitely a balancing act between being easy to read and causing the reader to have to context switch while reading. Most of the sugar in C# hits all the right spots though.

I have no doubt that some of this newer syntax is clever, and very welcome to many, but not everyone will realize that it's far more beneficial in the long term to cater to the common denominator.

> C# to add loads and loads of syntactic sugar

well some is necessary. example: init-only-Setter, was impossible to do before. You could not write the same Code, without it. No matter what you did.

using declarations where also necessary to increase readability.

and nullable reference types also were important!

A great deal of the “loads and loads of syntactic sugar” serves the purposes of making C# more functional-friendly. You might explore the new features from that paradigm, to help you reason about it.

Do you have any pointers on a gentle introduction to docker and kubernetes in the .net world? Most of the docs seem to be tuned to Linux ecosystems... which makes sense given the heritage.

Their adding of the functional-friendly “record” type in C# 9, along with the “with” statement, was huge for me.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/tutorials/exp...

> that is what killed F# effectively

F# has been an unwanted child of Microsoft, it actually adopted the language from Microsoft Research. As a language, F# is _very_ good (although not as good as the original OCaml, whose features had to be cut to be able to run on CLR). It's just not first-class citizen, so not everything may work with F#. And F#'s own development and features are blocked on CLR -- instead of F# charting its own path, each feature first has to be available for C#/CLR and only then will F# developers implement it (higher-kinded types are just one example).

But it's still much more pleasant "syntactic sugar to write the CIL bytecode" than C# can ever be.

> even Scala is dead

I beg to differ! Thankfully, Scala is very much not dead. Scala 3 is around the corner, with many more features and, even more importantly, several simplifications. And the community is also much larger compared to F# (or any other ML language, like Haskell). Innovation also takes place in the realm of libraries, like ZIO for example.

F# died?

And here I am happily using it for greenfield projects, interfacing with popular ecosystems and just generally getting things done!

Right now it really feels like F# is taking off. It is bundled with .NET Core, fully open-source, has a better REPL experience with Nuget integration, Ionide and Fable just had a new releases...

What killed F# was Microsoft never putting enough internal resources on it. It's been consistently an afterthought in various releases of VS, initial .NET Core support, etc. As a C#/.NET Dev for 20 years, I've tried several a few times to use F# only to find broken tooling, lousy IDE support in VS (compared to C#, etc.) Jetbrains Rider supposedly has better F# support, but given Microsoft's lack of interest and a tiny community, I still can't be bothered to pick it up. I'm more likely to learn/use Elixir than F# at this point.

FWIW I keep hearing about F# all the time. From where I sit, there is still a lot of enthusiasm around it. It does not seem dead at all. Is there not a lot of interop between F# and C#/dotnet?

F# is alive and well and is a historical and contemporary source of new C# language features.

> For "Store" apps, you would be using UWP, which are the "modern UI" apps you see when you use Windows 10. These can run on any Windows 10 version and Xbox One+. You can also make that style of app with WPF by theming it though.

"Project Reunion" which has key pieces in .NET 5 (including and especially the new C#/WinRT projection system, which replaces dark/magic .NET internals with NuGet packages) is entirely blurring the line between WPF and UWP. With WinUI 3 you can use all of the modern UI controls in WPF apps (and in WinForms if you're nasty). You can also package WPF apps for the Store, including opting into UWP sandboxing and security models (though not yet far enough that you can run WPF on the Xbox yet). (The ability to package WPF, WinForms, and other Win32 applications has been around for some time, in fact, that's not specifically new. Project Reunion has roadmap features to keep making it a better experience, though.)

> Xamarin is now mostly used for mobile .NET development, but I really can't recommend it nowadays as there's a lot of cruft and documentation, in comparison to the stellar work MS has been doing, is quite lacking. If you need to reuse .NET code in your mobile apps, it's there as a way for you to do that.

Upcoming .NET 6 will see Xamarin merged closer/deeper inside and the cross-platform pieces (currently named Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin.Devices) rebranded MAUI. Presumably that will also involve a lot of spring cleaning out of cruft and upgrades to the documentation. There's also roadmap talk of much more desktop support beyond just mobile (people wanting to share code not just between Android and iOS, but also Windows, macOS, and Linux).

Winforms works with ARM on Windows - as long as you doing it in the context of .NET 5. WPF is coming later this year afaik.

Seconded. Any book I've ever gotten in the "in Depth" series from Manning has been excellent, and this one is no different.