Thoughts on C#?

When last I tried it, maybe around 2014? I found it a kinder, cleaner Java with better tooling. Visual Studio (not Code) is still the best IDE I've ever used.

Unfortunately it's not popular in the circles I hang around in and the places I've worked. Now that .NET core is the one true runtime I'd welcome an opportunity to try it again; alas, I doubt I'll have such an opportunity (at least not through work).

I remember the upsides but I'm sure there are downsides I'm not aware of. I'd love to read a critique from someone with real world experience.

Not that you asked me but since Go is my goto language, my thought on C# is that it looks pretty cool. C# with hill-climbing thread pool and async seems rather compelling. I really see only two (major, obvious) downsides with C#:

- It has so much. language. design. This is both a strength and a weakness, of course, but C# really does take this to an extreme. I won't bother making a huge list of examples because I think you get the picture.

- Microsoft needs to stop doing things that harm confidence in .NET. Between the silliness of removing hot reloading from the CLI, the situation around debugging outside of Visual Studio products, and drama around the .NET organization... I feel cautious touching the .NET ecosystem. That's saying something considering the company that backs the Go programming language.

(Note: I have not used C# in production, so I can't speak to what it's like in that case. Seems like it's at least fairly "boring" in a good way for a lot of organizations though.)