It’s because C# is only really nice on the surface. As soon as you actually do something with it that takes it beyond its cozy CRUD, it becomes such a nuisance to work with.
We have an ODATA client that we build our selves to use in our React frontend. Now, this would obviously not have been something we also used on the backend if we knew what we know now, but it’s the perfect example to illustrate my decades of experience with C#. We had the client because we use a lot of Office365 and BC36 APIs and they are ODATA, and since we had the client we figured we might as well use ODATA on our internal APIs. Which was all well and good until we tried mixing EntityFramework, ASP versioning and ODATA together. These are all Microsoft packages mind you, and they just don’t work together. They each use the Model builder magic that C# comes with, but they each use it differently enough that things become a nightmare. Which basically sums up why C# has been a terrible language for its entire existence.
If you never get to those breaking points, then C# is fine. But when you use it for what you’d assume it was intended for, well… At least the ODATA experience sort of triggered my C# PTSD from back when I wrote an admin system to maintain all the thousands of school printers and computers in a municipality, which was hefty Active Directy work and an absolute nightmare to the point where I literally had to either extend or rewrite half the Microsoft packages because they either weren’t finished or outright terrible (again likely because they weren’t finished). Similar to how the ODATA, ASP versioning and EntiryFramework packages aren’t really finished right now. I mean, I can look at the road map for EF and see some of our issues as planned fixes on who knows when. Anyway, since those days more than a decade ago, it’s become obvious that if you want to do anything AD related then you need to use PowerShell and not C#, really, C# doesn’t even run in Azure runbooks and Python does so it’s obvious that Microsoft themselves don’t really use a whole lot of C# for that part of IT operations internally. And I think it’s frankly the same with a lot of things. The ODATA package seems to fall in that same “not used by Microsoft” box. Because it appears to be some sort of “fork” that’s mostly maintained by a single employee in China.
So yes, if you just use regular ASP and EF without versioning or ODATA to do very standard CRUD monolith APIs it’s a language that’s both fast and productive. Sure you’ll still need to do all sorts of silly things with your Azure DevOps pipelines to get EF migrations for Microsoft’s own SQL server to work, but hey, you can. But if you’re actually going to be doing things that takes it beyond it’s “basics” then no, C# is really not the language people are looking for but don’t know about.
I’m also partly in the “Java is sort of 10 years late with 21” club, but it’s not like anyone has switched away from Java in those 10 years, and really, it’s not like it was a fun experience to go through the .Net -> .Net Core -> .Net, .Net Standard and .Net Core -> .Net years, so maybe Java did it right?
Your issue seems to be with packages provided by Microsoft, not C# language itself. Model builder magic is part of those packages, not C# language. These types of libraries often make simple things quick and easy, but complex things (or just simple customization) much harder or even impossible.
I've seen this response before, but why on earth would we be using C# if not for its included batteries? I can't imagine a world where we would have chosen C# to write an API unless there were some specific benefits, and while I may be wrong to assume this, I don't think I've ever met someone who would. Not so much because there is anything wrong with C# or .Net for that matter, it's okish, it's just well... Honestly, writing C# is a lot like writing typescript with bad linting rules, at least to me. It's not that bad, but it's also not something I'd ever really want to do.
I agree with you that the choice of language should not be based solely on the language itself, but also on the ecosystem it provides for the task you need to complete.
I was just pointing out that your critique was about the included batteries, not the language. Every language has some bad libraries in its ecosystem.
The point I was trying to make was that C# has nothing but bad libraries in it's ecosystem. I've worked with quite a lot of languages and I've never experienced anything like it. Well, obviously Node has an "interesting" environment, but the flip-side is that it's very easy to work with what isn't there. C#'s libraries are like half-charged batteries that you won't realize are only half-charged until it's too late.
We have an ODATA client that we build our selves to use in our React frontend. Now, this would obviously not have been something we also used on the backend if we knew what we know now, but it’s the perfect example to illustrate my decades of experience with C#. We had the client because we use a lot of Office365 and BC36 APIs and they are ODATA, and since we had the client we figured we might as well use ODATA on our internal APIs. Which was all well and good until we tried mixing EntityFramework, ASP versioning and ODATA together. These are all Microsoft packages mind you, and they just don’t work together. They each use the Model builder magic that C# comes with, but they each use it differently enough that things become a nightmare. Which basically sums up why C# has been a terrible language for its entire existence.
If you never get to those breaking points, then C# is fine. But when you use it for what you’d assume it was intended for, well… At least the ODATA experience sort of triggered my C# PTSD from back when I wrote an admin system to maintain all the thousands of school printers and computers in a municipality, which was hefty Active Directy work and an absolute nightmare to the point where I literally had to either extend or rewrite half the Microsoft packages because they either weren’t finished or outright terrible (again likely because they weren’t finished). Similar to how the ODATA, ASP versioning and EntiryFramework packages aren’t really finished right now. I mean, I can look at the road map for EF and see some of our issues as planned fixes on who knows when. Anyway, since those days more than a decade ago, it’s become obvious that if you want to do anything AD related then you need to use PowerShell and not C#, really, C# doesn’t even run in Azure runbooks and Python does so it’s obvious that Microsoft themselves don’t really use a whole lot of C# for that part of IT operations internally. And I think it’s frankly the same with a lot of things. The ODATA package seems to fall in that same “not used by Microsoft” box. Because it appears to be some sort of “fork” that’s mostly maintained by a single employee in China.
So yes, if you just use regular ASP and EF without versioning or ODATA to do very standard CRUD monolith APIs it’s a language that’s both fast and productive. Sure you’ll still need to do all sorts of silly things with your Azure DevOps pipelines to get EF migrations for Microsoft’s own SQL server to work, but hey, you can. But if you’re actually going to be doing things that takes it beyond it’s “basics” then no, C# is really not the language people are looking for but don’t know about.
I’m also partly in the “Java is sort of 10 years late with 21” club, but it’s not like anyone has switched away from Java in those 10 years, and really, it’s not like it was a fun experience to go through the .Net -> .Net Core -> .Net, .Net Standard and .Net Core -> .Net years, so maybe Java did it right?