.NET is a solid platform and foundation for my organisation's apps, but I find it a bit boring and dated nowadays
Updated May 05, 2023
.NET is a solid platform and foundation for my organisation's apps, but I find it a bit boring and dated nowadays
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with .NET
.NET is used as the basis for most applications developed at my organisation. These applications are used across the entire organisation and some are publicly available. .NET was originally chosen as my organisation is traditionally a Microsoft shop and it seemed the logical choice. It provides an excellent foundation for our applications and is an extensive framework to use, allowing us to address all business problems with it.
- Solid foundation
- Good support from Microsoft and the community
- C# is an excellent language to use, it is well designed and likable
- Fairly performant
- Integrates well with SQL Server
- Integrates well with IIS
- Convoluted and complex class hierachy
- Feels a bit dated (it comes from the Java era after all)
- Microsoft has started ending support for older versions of the framework
- Can be slow to develop with initially, as setting up the required scaffolding takes time
- Documentation can be a bit hit and miss nowadays
- Feels a bit boring and uncool when compared to newer tech
- SQL Server integration
- IIS integration
- Solid foundation / framework
- Supported
- Fairly performant
- C#
- MVC
- NET
- Allowed for rapid application development in most cases
- Reduced costs because it is free to use
- Allowed conforming infrastructure as all apps built with it
If it was up to me, I'd rather use something like Node.js hands down. Things are simpler, there is no gigantic convoluted class hierarchy to learn like there is with .NET. Also Node is really fast and lightweight. I find .NET these days to be a totally solid product and it certainly has its place - but it seems a bit dated and boring to me now.
Do you think .NET delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with .NET's feature set?
Yes
Did .NET live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of .NET go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy .NET again?
Yes
Upgrading .NET
Yes - I have found upgrading from earlier version of .NET Core, even from version 5, to .NET6 to a completely awful process. Firstly the lifetime of these products seems very short which forces us to be continually upgrading. Secondly, the upgrades tend to break code that was working. For example, LINQ code that did work in 5 now throws these mysterious exceptions like "Nullable object cannot be null" because Microsoft keep changing the way they think it should work (see here: https://github.com/dotnet/efcore/issues/20633). Back in version 2 they had it working one way, then changed it for version 3, 4, and 5 - until version 6 and they have changed it back to the way it was done in version 2. Come on, what about a "don't break it - maintain backwards compatibility" attitude for .NET Core please!
- We were forced to upgrade because Microsoft ends support on the iterations of .NET Core so quickly - so the only benefit is it is a supported version (ostensibly)