The Case for C# and .NET

I like Rails (vintage, Rails 5). Unfortunately DotNet and EF combined now have virtually the same productivity but with massively better performance. Which is a shame as Ruby is a great language.

- Templates are no substitute for intuitive and minimal code for a number of reasons. (e.g. how to extend, how to customize, confidence that it isn't brittle if I change one thing, etc etc). If a template doesn't have the exact variation you want (e.g. a faster logging library) the learning curve is very high for a newcomer .NET dev. NOTE: I think this applies to some other OO languages too.

- Suggesting popular packages and namespaces is a great tooling improvement. But it could also imply a closed wall garden. The fact that other non C#/Java like languages don't have this problem even with something as minimal as VS Code as your IDE shows that the tooling is trying to cover over a language and/or library problem. With the Java/C#/other old OO lang workflow you need the knowledge you need to use the library itself (convention based, which class, which extension method, which namespace for that object to configure this feature, startup class conventions, etc). It isn't discoverable even with the packages imported. Remember just getting Serilog working in new ASP.Core and it taking a day or so with all the packages, config, etc etc if you don't already know what you are doing.

I like the improved docs. But fundamentally simplification/minimization is better. I think the dev workflow that means I don't need these tooling improvements is still a better experience. I like .NET, but I do understand when using other languages they seem to not have these issues despite not having the uber tooling that C# has. They don't have package suggestions, they barely even have auto complete yet the library design feels a lot more intuitive.

I can look up say a Fastify, Golang, even some F# examples with something like Giraffe and get a web app quickly with little code and no convention magic with everything being explicit yet concise. No fancy attributes I need to remember, no conventions in my startup classes I need to understand if any customisation, even dep injection is something to learn from people coming from some other platforms rather than just standard library calls composed together.

I actually like the .NET platform, don't get me wrong, I do think it is one of the best web platforms right now. Its more intuitive than Spring/Java as a comparison but that isn't saying much IMO. For newcomers I think the user experience to newcomers who are used to a lot less ceremony could be improved further. My first suggestion would be less "developer headspace required" to get started. On a personal note I think natural F# code tends to favor this from the teams I've been in but can't put my exact finger on a reason as to why - it feels more like coding Go/JS to me at least than C#.

- Domain modelling, algorithm, business logic, etc is easier with F# in general. C# is getting better than this, but F# is there and has been there for a long time.

- Integrating with build tooling and generation tends to be C# because these tools were designed for that target (i.e not the language itself). The value is in the tooling and the engineering in that - C# just happens to be the target.

Personally with the above I've found most of the logic tends to be in F# with some C# projects for where the packages needs that build tooling support (i.e. not the language or syntax, but for the tooling or other features of Roslyn). An example would be Grpc.Tools. Most of the time these projects can use generated code anyway so the writing of C# can be kept to a minimum - i.e. not one single C# file in the C# project. Besides I think the learning curve/barrier for a language isn't really syntax, or language features - its the libraries to use, the patterns, the ecosystem, package manager, CI/CD settings, etc. Using F# isn't a large cost once you've learnt all those things that are shared which is way more than isn't.