Missed the Last 10 Years of C#? Read This Quick Catch-up Guide
I originally posted this post on my blog a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Here's an opinionated catch-up guide if you missed the last decade of the C#/.NET/Microsoft evolution. 1. C# isn't JAVA anymore That joke doesn't work anymore. The two languages have taken completely different paths. They don't even look the same. 2. There's a new runtime: .NET .NET is multiplatform and open-sourced. We have the classic one, we call it: .NET Framework, which you probably already know. And the new one was called .NET Core. But now, it's simply .NET. Yes, naming is hard. Oh, with .NET, we have way better tooling like a command line interface to create projects. Love that! 3. Speaking of the language, the main language features are still there C# is still an imperative side-effect-heavy language. LINQ is still here. But with every release, it's adopting more features from functional languages, like lambda expressions, pattern matching, and records. (See #7) 4. There's excellent support for asynchronous methods We have two new keywords: async and await for async methods. 5. There's a whole lot of new small language features Apart from async/await (from C# 5.0) we haven't had a release with a single major feature. Most of the new features are syntactic sugar for existing features. You can still find your way around without them. 6. There's a new feature you shouldn't miss That's Nullable References. It should have been called: "non-nullable references" instead. Do you remember nullable primitive types? Like int?? We allow a type to contain null by appending a ? when declaring it. We can do the same for classes. So Movie? m can be null, but Movie m can't. And the compiler warns us when we're trying to use a reference that might be null. Awesome! 7. There are lots of new features, but you only need a few If you want to see the new C# features, you can read The History of C# on the official docs. But I compiled my own list of C# features we should know about. Those are the features I like and have used the most. 8. A "Hello, world" is now literally one line of code We don't need to declare a class and a Main method for console applications anymore. Just write your code directly in a file like in a scripting language. Less boilerplate. 9. Too many features are making C# less consistent I like C# and its new features but I stopped expanding that list with the most recent features. C# is getting bloated with more features that are making the language less consistent. I don't like that. 10. There's a new web framework The same way we have a new runtime, we have a new web framework: ASP.NET Core. You already see the confusion with names? Some things are "Core" but others don't. And these days, we have recruiters asking if we have experience with ".NET," even when we introduce ourselves as C# developers. Ok, I'm ranting...back to the point. ASP.NET Core was a full rewrite of the classic ASP.NET. There's no Global.asax, web.config, or files listed on csproj files. If you knew and used the old ASP.NET, I wrote a guide with the difference between the two, back when ASP.NET Core was new. 11. Well, there's Xamarin, MAUI, Blazor... But unless you're planning to do front-end work, you don't need to worry about them. Microsoft is still trying to find, create, and establish a golden hammer for the front-end side. Sure, I'm missing a lot of other things. But you're safe catching up on those. Welcome, back! Join my email list and get a 2-minute email with curated resources about programming and software engineering every Friday. Don't miss out next Friday email.
I originally posted this post on my blog a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Here's an opinionated catch-up guide if you missed the last decade of the C#/.NET/Microsoft evolution.
1. C# isn't JAVA anymore
That joke doesn't work anymore. The two languages have taken completely different paths. They don't even look the same.
2. There's a new runtime: .NET
.NET is multiplatform and open-sourced.
We have the classic one, we call it: .NET Framework, which you probably already know. And the new one was called .NET Core. But now, it's simply .NET. Yes, naming is hard.
Oh, with .NET, we have way better tooling like a command line interface to create projects. Love that!
3. Speaking of the language, the main language features are still there
C# is still an imperative side-effect-heavy language. LINQ is still here.
But with every release, it's adopting more features from functional languages, like lambda expressions, pattern matching, and records. (See #7)
4. There's excellent support for asynchronous methods
We have two new keywords: async and await for async methods.
5. There's a whole lot of new small language features
Apart from async/await (from C# 5.0) we haven't had a release with a single major feature. Most of the new features are syntactic sugar for existing features. You can still find your way around without them.
6. There's a new feature you shouldn't miss
That's Nullable References. It should have been called: "non-nullable references" instead.
Do you remember nullable primitive types? Like int?? We allow a type to contain null by appending a ? when declaring it. We can do the same for classes. So Movie? m can be null, but Movie m can't.
And the compiler warns us when we're trying to use a reference that might be null. Awesome!
7. There are lots of new features, but you only need a few
If you want to see the new C# features, you can read The History of C# on the official docs.
But I compiled my own list of C# features we should know about. Those are the features I like and have used the most.
8. A "Hello, world" is now literally one line of code
We don't need to declare a class and a Main method for console applications anymore. Just write your code directly in a file like in a scripting language. Less boilerplate.
9. Too many features are making C# less consistent
I like C# and its new features but I stopped expanding that list with the most recent features.
C# is getting bloated with more features that are making the language less consistent. I don't like that.
10. There's a new web framework
The same way we have a new runtime, we have a new web framework: ASP.NET Core.
You already see the confusion with names? Some things are "Core" but others don't. And these days, we have recruiters asking if we have experience with ".NET," even when we introduce ourselves as C# developers. Ok, I'm ranting...back to the point.
ASP.NET Core was a full rewrite of the classic ASP.NET. There's no Global.asax, web.config, or files listed on csproj files. If you knew and used the old ASP.NET, I wrote a guide with the difference between the two, back when ASP.NET Core was new.
11. Well, there's Xamarin, MAUI, Blazor...
But unless you're planning to do front-end work, you don't need to worry about them. Microsoft is still trying to find, create, and establish a golden hammer for the front-end side.
Sure, I'm missing a lot of other things. But you're safe catching up on those. Welcome, back!
Join my email list and get a 2-minute email with curated resources about programming and software engineering every Friday. Don't miss out next Friday email.
