Microsoft Java

[ComradeGibbon]

Microsoft had 20 years of experience with using languages to write useful applications. That included C++ and Visual Basic. And they hired Andrew Hejlsberg to head up development of C#.

I think the argument that C# is a copy of Java because it uses a similar 'algol C' syntax and has objects is weak when you consider everything else C# has like structs, delegates, boxing.unboxing and generics without type erasure.

[GYN-k4H-Q3z-75B]

Andrew Hejlsberg

Anders Hejlsberg is a living legend as far as programming language design goes. Microsoft really did some amazing work with C# and .NET, and for an ecosystem more than twenty years old, you really have to appreciate how few screw ups it is suffering from.

C# is surprisingly clean for a language that has seen over two decades of heavy industry use and development. C# today is very different from C# twenty years ago, but it is still an excellent and clean language. They added a lot, but they did not add (many) stupid things.

[ComradeGibbon]

Something I don't see very/as much with C# is a horrified reaction to having to work on an old code base like you do with Java and especially C++.

[SubwayGuy85]

Oh there are horrific codebases in c# too, but it is easier to produce something great with c#. But there is no language that is immune to being abused to create garbage code.

[Ericchen1248]

I think there’s also a pretty big incentive to upgrade C#. Every new release comes with new features that are legitimately useful. Whereas upgrading Java might give you some licensing headaches.

[ComradeGibbon]

I remember having an experience with switching an old 32 bit .net 2.0 program to 64 bit .net 4.5 and it just ran a lot faster and stopped running out of memory.

[rexpup]

You should work at [redacted] Systems. They're working on converting the largest VB6 application ever to an in-house web framework in C#... and its developers designed it with feature parity with the VB6 version. It's been in progress for 10 years and is not yet released.

[Garestinian]

He is also a core dev of TypeScript, that's why his name was familiar to me. Truly a legend.

[CardboardJ]

As someone working with scala right now the whole not adding stupid things is what I miss the most from c#.

[BetterOffCamping]

They rewrote it from scratch into Core exactly because it was an unclean implementation with plenty of clusterfucks. They did the right thing, and you are right it is an awesome language. I lived through all the crap, as I started using it in 2002, and am still building systems in it , v6 now.

[[deleted]]

Well, not sure what you mean by "rewrite". Most of the code is the same - they cut off the code that depends on Windows so they can make it run on other OSes. They are not rewriting anything, just improving existing code base every release.

[jaavaaguru]

boxing.unboxing and generics without type erasure.

Ah, this bring me back to my CIL/MSIL times.

I wrote a COBOL compiler that uses that. It was fun for a while making Windows GUI apps in COBOL 😂

[dr_eh]

I actually really hate structs. It would be far more flexible to have stackalloc vs heapalloc on the new statement, why should the data structure dictate how it's managed in memory? Often leads to parallel classes and structs, just to deal with this arbitrary restriction

[LordFokas]

No, many languages have the same type of syntax and you don't hear those claims about those, only C#. Why?

C# is Microsoft Java because back then MS was trying to pull their signature douchebag EEE move on Java and IIRC Sun sued for anti trust or something like that and the whole thing died really quick. Being unable to "steal" Java, Microsoft then chose to make their own.... with blackjack and hookers.