Why isn't C# more popular?
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Maybe. The idea that c++ is highly efficient comes from the fact that c is. However, if using many of the features of c++ can make a c++ application take more memory and run slower than a managed language. With the advent of dotNet Core 5.0, the performance and the cross platform issue mainly becomes moot. The only real thing lacking is WinForms for non-windows environments. The wpf approach has some advantages for gaming and graphic applications. It however, fails when it comes to line-of-business class of applications that fund most development. My question would be why do people still think Java (or its cousins like Kotlin) make sense. My take is that there is still a culture that is anti-Microsoft.
tcruse wrote:
My take is that there is still a culture that is anti-Microsoft
Now how on earth could such a culture develop? A mystery in a conundrum. (or something related to how they treat their customers - like releasing defective software since as long ago as DOS 6.0)
[edit] I had misspelled DOS (believe it or not)[/edit]"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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My $0.02: 1. For all its advantages, C#, like Java, is unsuited to system-level programming. The kernel in both Windows and Linux is programmed in C and ASM. 2. Many organizations have an investment in C and C++ code. Conversion to C# would require a major investment. Note that this is also one of the reasons that companies keep using Cobol, so I don't see this changing in the near future. 3. C# does have a serious learning curve - not for the language, but for its libraries. If you have learnt to do things in C or C++, converting to C# is far from simple.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Maybe. The idea that c++ is highly efficient comes from the fact that c is. However, if using many of the features of c++ can make a c++ application take more memory and run slower than a managed language. With the advent of dotNet Core 5.0, the performance and the cross platform issue mainly becomes moot. The only real thing lacking is WinForms for non-windows environments. The wpf approach has some advantages for gaming and graphic applications. It however, fails when it comes to line-of-business class of applications that fund most development. My question would be why do people still think Java (or its cousins like Kotlin) make sense. My take is that there is still a culture that is anti-Microsoft.
The idea that C++ is highly efficient comes from the zero cost abstraction design, not from anything else. Besides, performance is not everything, languages like C and C++ can offer deterministic execution time as well as object lifetime, stuff that is impossible with managed languages by design, which make them a poor choice for system programming. The fact that NetCore doesn't support WinForms, makes C# a poor choice for cross-platform GUI application development as well, so it ends up being a niche platform for people who find themselves in need to program on Linux but don't want to learn anything besides C#. "However, if using many of the features of c++ can make a c++ application take more memory and run slower than a managed language." Really? you have an example?
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I think there's a few reasons. 1) In VS, it's a go to language for desktop development, yes and sorry, there are tens of thousands of those in use every day. No need for cross platform, ever. While it's still a substantial market, it has been eclipsed by cross platform stuff. I know it's fully capable of that, but you start to lose the advantage of the language in a hurry. 2) To my first case point above, there's also a split between vb.net and C# that dilutes the usage. (Fire away!) Being bilingual, those translations back and forth are pretty easy in the .net environment. Yes, I know the differences but over the years there's a lot of parity and you may never hit a wall in vb.net that is solved in C# in real world apps. 3) Without a good reason, you're not going to move from C/C++ to C#. You might if find yourself in a RAD desktop scenario, but you're probably not chasing that world if it's out of your comfort zone. 4) Programming has matured some into more of a profession. Your eye doctor doesn't see some new ortho procedure and think; "hey, I'll be an orthopedist". I still glance at the newest languages, but it's not the 80's or 90's and having time to play with a massive language isn't a hobby anymore. The be all, end all, one size fits all theory (Java,lmao) hasn't really panned out well. Languages are tools that have their best use. You can put a screw in with a hammer, but it's liable not to be pretty.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I believe that there are too many languages available for any one language to become the number #1 language in use. Though I am completely fluent in C# and have built quite a few C# applications over the years, I still prefer VB.NET for all my own development endeavors. This comes from my years as a DBase\FoxBase\Clipper developer in the late 1980s and 1990s. One cannot also assume that surveys are actually are a reflection of popularity for any one language as all surveys have built in biases. As my wife has always told me, marketing and surveys is all about what answer(s) you want to obtain and then developing surveys to attain them. Nonetheless, as some commenters here have said, C# cannot compete with those areas where C\C++ must be used and\or is preferred. And nor can it compete with the many niche languages that have popped up over the years that have very loyal proponents, even though C# can do most if not all of what these languages provide. You also still have a lot of Microsoft haters out there who would never give a Microsoft product a legitimate chance. But do not despair, C# and VB.NET will be around for some time to come... :)
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
It is a (mostly) general language, but best suited to app development, there is a whole world of development that C#/net can't touch or has no part of.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I think there's a lot of great reasons here that focus on language alone, and a handful that talk about how software is released once it leaves the IDE. While Azure has implemented a lot of nifty features to make deployment easier, to me the biggest draw back is the release and management of applications in Prod. Working in a number of FinTech companies, they used C# but only in very limited ways. Who wants to support IIS servers and deal with the underlying Windows server? It's a nightmare. It took a long time to get decent config management tools to work with Windows. While linux goes bad too, patching issues and system failures feel more severe on Windows server. For the majority of applications especially anything customer facing Java rules the roost. I'm not thrilled about Java / Tomcat but I rather support that then anything C#. I've never seen a .net core deployment in the wild, though I would love for things to go that way. I've thought about specializing in that area to assist orgs trying to accomplish that but definitely a lot of sharp edges to consider. The horror stories seem to end in a full stop not compatible not supported by Microsoft.
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My $0.02: 1. For all its advantages, C#, like Java, is unsuited to system-level programming. The kernel in both Windows and Linux is programmed in C and ASM. 2. Many organizations have an investment in C and C++ code. Conversion to C# would require a major investment. Note that this is also one of the reasons that companies keep using Cobol, so I don't see this changing in the near future. 3. C# does have a serious learning curve - not for the language, but for its libraries. If you have learnt to do things in C or C++, converting to C# is far from simple.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
I agree. As an embedded developer (now retired), neither C# or Java would have been a viable option for the products I worked on. In the last 20 years of my career I think the largest amount of memory I had was 256K of RAM and 1M of FLASH (a TI DSP). Most of my projects had way less than this so C# or JAVA were nonstarters.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I like C#, but it is not really cross-platform, requiring some time to get changes ported to Linux, which are always missing some libraries, and I have no idea if it is supported on Apple machines.
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Microsoft seems to think they are. They also seem to think that deleting what you allocate is far too much to ask of programmers.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Rick York wrote:
deleting what you allocate is far too much to ask of programmers
Actually it is. "Use after free" is one of the biggest security risks in C/C++. Also, not removing what's no longer in use eventually leads to memory exhaustion. These two situations have been known issues since at least 1958 when Lisp was first developed. This is also why all high level business languages, as opposed to embedded or operating system development, contain at least memory garbage collection. Almost all early languages (COBOL, BASIC, FORTRAN, APL, Algol, etc.) have some concept of garbage collection for some data types. What changes with Java was that all data types are now garbage collected unless the programmer explicitly tell the compiler not to do so.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I am definitively a C# guy, but I generally love programming so I've also learned/used JavaScript, VB.Net, LISP, Python, misc other obscure scripting languages and I am currently taking a C++ class so I can effectively play with some specific SDK's. Learning these languages have each taught me different lessons. There is no correct language, some are just plain easier to deploy in different places. The Microsoft (open source!) .NET 5 gives me some hope that I'll get to use C# more frequently in my future. I certainly don't understand the Anti-Microsoft groups. In very recent years, MS has been a beacon of what I've always fundamentally believed needed to happen; IE, the dismantling of proprietary platforms and file types so that all things have the potential to interoperate. That is the only path to "thriving" in the next era and the companies (regardless of their size) that continue to live in a "black box" state will someday die if they don't focus on being the "open world" stars instead of the "closed world" wardens.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
It's simple for me... How much can I trust MSFT to not break their old projects. We have 20-30 and even 50 year old code, still running in production! Have you loaded a .NET 1 project and recompiled it lately? My past experience with MSFT was when they abandoned 16 bit C++ support. We had to buy a Borland C++ Compiler to compile the MSFT 32 bit C++ (new features), into 16 bit code which 90% of our "clients" required as their DLL. Don't get me started on the nightmare we had doing a Mobile Project in C#. We are starting to embrace C# now that Rider exists. It's not the language, it's the ecosystem the language ends up requiring. Both for compiling and for running!
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
C# is my #1 lang BUT IMO its because of its refusal to acknowledge the JIT is a failed idea so full of baggage & half baked ideas people who still argue for JIT just end up making excuses for why it lags behind at this point. The lang and runtime need to be as one... which is another issue with .NET It takes more time to port giving you slower and more bloated code.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
Well when it started and for a long time after there was an Open Source hostile environment at Microsoft. Ballmer did not do it any favors for sure. Java was and is more widely supported due to it embracing the open source community and consequently having hundreds of ways to do any one thing. Now Java has inertia on its side and C# still is in its infancy (comparatively) as far as open source is concerned. Basically Microsoft bit itself in the butt.
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Rick York wrote:
deleting what you allocate is far too much to ask of programmers
Actually it is. "Use after free" is one of the biggest security risks in C/C++. Also, not removing what's no longer in use eventually leads to memory exhaustion. These two situations have been known issues since at least 1958 when Lisp was first developed. This is also why all high level business languages, as opposed to embedded or operating system development, contain at least memory garbage collection. Almost all early languages (COBOL, BASIC, FORTRAN, APL, Algol, etc.) have some concept of garbage collection for some data types. What changes with Java was that all data types are now garbage collected unless the programmer explicitly tell the compiler not to do so.
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I've experimented with a lot of languages over the years and delivered production code in at least a handful. Of all, I find C# to be the most genial. It has syntax close enough to C/C++ not to alienate those programmers, has plenty of high-level stuff to keep users of languages such as Java happy, and these days has good performance and is open and cross-platform. The only thing I hate about it is the terrible 'destructor' pattern, which you can ignore most of the time. Despite all of this, I rarely if ever read a headline that says C# is gaining in popularity. There's no point in getting into too many syntax specifics because that would be a never-ending discussion but why does it fail to hit the spot with so many developers and companies?
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.
I agree. C++ is a nightmare (and I've been programming in C++ years longer than C#). C++'s error messages are idiotic; sometimes they're only useful for identifying the line an error occurred on. For years, I assumed it had to be this way; spend hours pouring over "correct" code wondering why the compiler is complaining. Then my first substantial C# program compiled and linked almost the first time! No crazy "errors" about correct code! The error messages made sense! With C# you generally don't need third-party packages. A typical C++ project at work requires separate third-party packages (with all their quirks, complexity, and bad documentation) for: 1. The GUI 2. Processing XML 3. Encryption 4. Open SSL C# catches many memory errors. On a project I did the C# end and a team in Germany did the C++ end. I mentioned to one of them that C# catches memory errors, and got the arrogant reply "There are no memory errors in my code!". Fast forward a few weeks. Their end wasn't working: Memory errors. I took the opportunity to replace what they were doing, and their whole team (four of them) was taken off the project (and reassigned). I got a stock grant for saving the company money. I'd choose C# over C++ for almost anything.
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Nonsense. If that is too much to ask of a programmer then they need to find another line of work.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
A big part of the problem is that it’s not always clear who bears the responsibility for releasing the allocation. If you think otherwise, perhaps it’s you who need to consider alternate careers. Or prepare yourself for a big shock if you are just getting started and have just assumed it is that simple.
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A big part of the problem is that it’s not always clear who bears the responsibility for releasing the allocation. If you think otherwise, perhaps it’s you who need to consider alternate careers. Or prepare yourself for a big shock if you are just getting started and have just assumed it is that simple.
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If it isn't clear then you aren't doing it right.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Exactly the kind of rebuttal I would expect from someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience. Your pronouncement would be more defensible if you had written “somebody” didn’t do it right, but it’s not necessarily the someone who is writing code today and the question of what exactly “it” is has a couple of potential answers. It could be, for example, that a library author meant to conform to an specific predefined protocol and failed. Or it could be they were implementing something new and the documentation they provided is incomplete or incorrect. In especially old code, perhaps they *were* correctly following a known protocol but the protocol itself ended up redefined. Or one of my favorites: a library has multiple functions that accept an allocation as a parameter. Some consume the allocation and others just reference it, and there’s a convention to help you as the library user recognize which are which. But also there’s an old function that doesn’t follow the convention, its behavior is grandfathered in due to being used in existing systems and the footnote mentioning this legacy deviation is cropped off the bottom of the photocopied documentation you were given. I’ve run into all of those scenarios in large scale production systems that I was trying to interface with. It’s easy to make a simplistic assertion that the only reason this is an issue is that somewhere, sometime, somebody did something wrong. You may be 100% correct about that. But you’re making the very point you’re arguing against. Things like this absolutely happen, and it is in real life one of the most common sources of program misbehavior. We know from decades of experience that this *will* go wrong and that it *will* result in system instability and/or security exposures. So we can cross our fingers and hope after all this time as systems continue to increase in complexity that coders as a population will become perfect at it, or we can automate this tedious, error-prone task for essentially perfect behavior today and let developers spend their time and energy on the real meat of their projects.
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It's simple for me... How much can I trust MSFT to not break their old projects. We have 20-30 and even 50 year old code, still running in production! Have you loaded a .NET 1 project and recompiled it lately? My past experience with MSFT was when they abandoned 16 bit C++ support. We had to buy a Borland C++ Compiler to compile the MSFT 32 bit C++ (new features), into 16 bit code which 90% of our "clients" required as their DLL. Don't get me started on the nightmare we had doing a Mobile Project in C#. We are starting to embrace C# now that Rider exists. It's not the language, it's the ecosystem the language ends up requiring. Both for compiling and for running!
I can't argue with your real-world experience but I once had to compile some 90s C code (i.e. not that old) and it took me ages to get it to compile with either the MS compiler or GCC. I spent years writing C++ in video games and am well aware of its positives and negatives and why it is still essential for so many projects. All I am saying is that, in my opinion, C# is a better language than surveys would suggest and I agree with many other comments on here that argue there is bias and prejudice in the system.
Thank you to anyone taking the time to read my posts.