C# is one of my favourite languages and .NET is an awesome stack top to bottom. The interoperability between F# (a fantastic functional) language and C# is a real bonus that was just touched on in this article. Writing a compiler for .NET is easy and fun as you can target CIL (Common Intermediate Language) either as binary or text (.NET assembly basically). Something that builds in .NET today will probably run 20 years from now but faster.
Another benefit that is really stands out once you start using it is that you can write anything in it. It integrates to C well and you can get absolute control over the bits in memory and on disk if you want. You can avoid the garbage collector most entirely where you think you need to. You can also operate at a high level of abstraction. It has, if anything, way too many web and GUI frameworks (even just from Microsoft).
And that last part is the rub…
The downside of C# is that it is both old and rapidly evolving. That means multiple competing frameworks. That means that the complexity of the language keeps increasing. It is not quite C++ (and WAY better designed) but it has the same problem. The number of features and the breadth of syntax is non-trivial. There is also a bit of “magic” that has crept in that allows you to skip boiler-plate with the side-effect of basically have behaviour you cannot see in the code. All this is optional.
If you write everything green field with some coding standards, it is no problem. But if you want to read other people’s code, there is a fair bit of language to learn.
Like English, C# is incredibly useful and can be used anywhere. Like English, it is super easy to pick up and use. Like English, it feels like you can use it your whole life and still not know it all.
Another benefit that is really stands out once you start using it is that you can write anything in it. It integrates to C well and you can get absolute control over the bits in memory and on disk if you want. You can avoid the garbage collector most entirely where you think you need to. You can also operate at a high level of abstraction. It has, if anything, way too many web and GUI frameworks (even just from Microsoft).
And that last part is the rub…
The downside of C# is that it is both old and rapidly evolving. That means multiple competing frameworks. That means that the complexity of the language keeps increasing. It is not quite C++ (and WAY better designed) but it has the same problem. The number of features and the breadth of syntax is non-trivial. There is also a bit of “magic” that has crept in that allows you to skip boiler-plate with the side-effect of basically have behaviour you cannot see in the code. All this is optional.
If you write everything green field with some coding standards, it is no problem. But if you want to read other people’s code, there is a fair bit of language to learn.
Like English, C# is incredibly useful and can be used anywhere. Like English, it is super easy to pick up and use. Like English, it feels like you can use it your whole life and still not know it all.