152 engineers on Hacker News describe using C# first-hand: 32 endorse it, 11 regret it, 5 are mixed.
“And then I spent years drinking that kool-aid. I regret this decision to this day. What a waste of my youth.”
regret · production · iLemming · 2026-09-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“So what's the reason we use C#? Productivity, ease of debugging and testing, and resilience to bugs”
endorse · production · iliketrains · 2025-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I built a backend web api this year with it and C# is fantastic.”
endorse · personal · 1 yr · pier25 · 2025-11-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have a small C# service that we run locally via Docker... Since it's small, it has worked well.”
endorse · production · catlover76 · 2025-11-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“while C# (and the dotnet runtime) are awesome, MS is doing it a disservice lately”
endorse · production · jitbit · 2025-09-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've often cursed in C# because something that could be done trivially in C++ if impossible and causes the dev to create convuluted C#”
regret · production · NotGMan · 2024-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“One of the apps I have in production right now leans heavily on using Results, and the biggest pain point — besides handling exceptions from C# world”
mixed · production · nozzlegear · 2024-12-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Things that are hard/impossible in C# is easy in TypeScript”
regret · production · mythz · 2024-12-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I really don't like working with C# (or Java). I've seen C# code bases that were so complicated to work with that they were actively hindering the development teams”
regret · production · Quothling · 2024-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“This is why I enjoy writing C#/.Net, I don't need to deal with nonsense like print debugging.”
endorse · production · xnorswap · 2024-10-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We did it because we needed coroutines easily and because most of our programmer aren't really C# programmers”
regret · production · Quothling · 2024-07-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the debugging experience, stability, flexibility etc are more painful for my taste.”
regret · production · anonzzzies · 2024-06-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“create a new C# Console application. From .NET 6 onwards, it uses the new "top level statements" style”
endorse · personal · 2 yr · SeasonalEnnui · 2023-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I lead a project based on C#/ASP.net/SQL server.”
regret · production · javcasas · 2023-04-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I also regret building some things in C# or Java a long time ago.”
regret · personal · lee101 · 2022-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it's always been much, much, harder to get people to make 'good' C# code in my experience.”
regret · production · EnKopVand · 2022-07-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The recent pattern matching improvements alone make our code so much cleaner.”
endorse · production · haacked · 2022-07-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm loving it, feeling very productive... The biggest downside I've run into is that so much of the documentation... is geared towards older versions”
mixed · personal · romanhn · 2022-06-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have to say that I like C# a lot”
endorse · production · fwsgonzo · 2022-05-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I was paid to use C# before I was paid to use Go... Keeping on top of .NET is already a pain”
mixed · production · Philip-J-Fry · 2022-04-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Async/await is one of the better things about C# (the language used for ASP.NET Core)”
endorse · production · 1 yr · eldavido · 2021-10-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Eventually we replaced it with C# code. Access to full software dev tools (debugger, automated tests) is really something you don't want to be without on large projects”
endorse · production · davedx · 2020-10-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We decided to stick with C# since our dev team knows it, and it's a great language.”
endorse · production · lancefisher · 2019-06-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“You can however write pretty decent functional code in C#. I ported a 10kloc F# codebase to a very alien-looking functional-style C#.”
endorse · production · davidgrenier · 2018-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“c# is a good stable language and my team is confident that what we develop will make the customers happy”
endorse · production · winkelwagen · 2018-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I often find myself really missing how well organized C# was. The reason I don't switch back is the ability to deploy code in a web browser.”
endorse · production · seanmcdirmid · 2018-12-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“With, say, C# code, or especially Python code, there are too many cases where a method call slips inside or outside the try/catch block”
regret · production · klodolph · 2018-11-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm a big fan of C# and my favorite feature is Linq.”
endorse · production · scarface74 · 2017-12-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We moved to more and more functional concepts using C# as the team learned about them and had a lot of success with them.”
endorse · production · runT1ME · 2017-08-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've tried those tools before, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to write software that way anymore.”
regret · production · spacepluk · 2016-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Because you can write the same code in c# easily.”
endorse · production · umurgdk · 2016-11-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we moved to C# as it allowed cross-platform development on PC and Mac”
endorse · production · mb_72 · 2016-09-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It works well enough for our needs (e.g. C# has one of the best GCs on the market), and no one is a platform/language zealot”
endorse · production · sklivvz1971 · 2016-05-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“These days C# + Monogame solves all my Language, API and Platform distribution problems and allows for fast iteration during development.”
endorse · personal · hacker_9 · 2016-04-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using it for years and love what it has evolved to.”
endorse · production · rottyguy · 2015-07-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the WinPhone with C# and VS is by far the friendliest”
endorse · production · AdeptusAquinas · 2015-07-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Better language choice is yet another potential mitigation. For me that usually means C#.”
endorse · production · MaulingMonkey · 2014-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My last 4-5 years there, just about all new apps. were going to C#/.NET platform.”
endorse · production · emcrazyone · 2014-12-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I like writing C# the most, by far. The language is more modern, things like async/await, Linq, and Entity Framework”
endorse · production · manyxcxi · 2014-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using c# since beta and I love it but agree that IIS is a cluster fuck”
endorse · production · SonicSoul · 2014-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I like some of .Net and C#, but what does one do for a good project and a salery.”
mixed · production · zargath · 2014-07-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“C# is surprisingly decent as a webdev language.”
endorse · production · overgard · 2014-02-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“after we moved to C# we have had people actively threatening to resign if we ever went back to Eclipse (and Java).”
endorse · production · hravnx · 2014-02-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've always liked C#... but I would never develop it for anything other than a hobby application.”
mixed · personal · fingerprinter · 2013-10-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“c# (which I think in MS's best work, by the way); c# was easy to pick up.”
endorse · production · crag · 2013-03-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We love C# and the Azure/VisualStudio integration is great.”
endorse · production · vyrotek · 2010-10-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I always see worried looks when refactoring dynamically typed code. And not so much when we are modifying, say C#.”
endorse · production · jeswin · 2010-08-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We switched over in our shop on release week, and I must say that I'm enjoying the new features of .NET and C# 4.0.”
endorse · production · statenjason · 2010-05-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I develop primarily dotnet/C# apps on a MacBook pro M5”
neutral · production · harshalizee · 2026-10-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“With C#, whenever codex need some info about the packages we use, it just use ILSpy to decompile the nuget”
neutral · production · sreekanth850 · 2026-10-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I find Go to be more of a direct competitor to C# - but it has the edge due to lacking exceptions (which is 15 years wasted of my life, never again).”
neutral · personal · 15 yr · zamalek · 2026-05-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“In current C# I usually do something like”
neutral · production · JCTheDenthog · 2026-05-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been coding in C# for nearly 20 years and have been using AWS technologies for nearly a decade”
neutral · production · 20 yr · cebert · 2025-12-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the final trace with parallel workers was just C#'s workers threads and thread pool.”
neutral · production · iliketrains · 2025-12-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“master the stack we use at work: C# for plugins, Python and Powershell for IT admin and JS for frontend”
neutral · production · CornySensei · 2025-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I used to write a lot of C#. I used to write a lot of Go.”
neutral · production · landr0id · 2025-11-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We ended up dropping them, but not until we had initiated a migration to Java/PG instead of C#/MSSQL.”
neutral · production · eitally · 2025-11-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We run a large C# codebase (1M+ LOC)”
neutral · production · smithkl42 · 2025-09-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It's so much cleaner and I'm sorely missing it in C#.”
neutral · personal · neonsunset · 2024-11-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“every language I ever shipped software with, from ASP, PHP, and C# to Swift, TypeScript and Rust”
neutral · production · blixt · 2024-11-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I already was familiar with C# and Razor syntax after having built many C# server-side rendered web apps.”
neutral · production · randyburden · 2024-11-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“starting off my career as a C# dev and I never looked back.”
neutral · production · victor9000 · 2024-10-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“embedding a browser (WebView2) in a C# Desktop app”
neutral · personal · superjan · 2024-10-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“a middleware (RoR, C#, Rust), nginx ingress and cert-manager”
neutral · production · b7we5b7a · 2023-12-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We switched to c# and python and js/ts for new dev at some point”
neutral · production · monkeycantype · 2023-04-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we won't be able to move most of our types into different namespaces or assemblies.”
neutral · production · bob1029 · 2023-02-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“one doesn't expect this in C# app”
neutral · production · majkinetor · 2023-01-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“In the past two years I've done hands on keyboard coding in Python, C#, JavaScript, and Go.”
neutral · production · 2 yr · scarface74 · 2022-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm a C# guy who learnt C over the past 2 years.”
neutral · production · kovac · 2022-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I switched to C# and object-oriented programming in 2002. I still have MS Pro Basic code in production from '90.”
neutral · production · 20 yr · ChicagoDave · 2022-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've spent most of my career with perl, python, c#, and java”
neutral · production · saxonww · 2022-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I used a pretty featureful C# CSV parsing library which did pretty well on benchmarks”
neutral · production · mastax · 2022-11-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Global type-checking between C# and F# projects comes out-of-the-box (but you have to design the shared types properly)”
neutral · production · victorNicollet · 2022-03-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“now in my day-to-day I write C# and maintain the linux servers where the .NET Core business application lives.”
neutral · production · Frondo · 2021-12-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I did make an initial prototype with C#, but things were much easier to make work well on both counts with Rust and Tokio.”
neutral · personal · Lorkki · 2021-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“compared to any other language I've used in prod (C#, Typescript, Javascript, and PHP)”
neutral · production · aaronmu · 2021-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“for the .net ecosystem we use C# of F# depending on how relaxed the engineering team and the stakeholders”
neutral · production · StreamBright · 2021-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I actually develop C# applications on Mac and run them in production on Ubuntu”
neutral · production · cyral · 2021-11-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I worked on a mixed C++ and C# codebase where we switched from in-process calls to IPC for that very reason”
neutral · production · codeflo · 2021-04-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The UI was written with Inferno + MobX and the backend in Swift/C#/Kotlin depending on the platform.”
neutral · production · pier25 · 2021-03-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use C# for process automation.”
neutral · production · tinco · 2020-12-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the only language of the 13+ I've used in production code”
neutral · production · wolfadex · 2020-12-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“There was no reason to replace a working C# application”
neutral · production · Cthulhu_ · 2020-11-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we were able to completely define our UI state machines in C# classes that can be tested in perfect isolation”
neutral · production · bob1029 · 2020-11-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Coming from Java, Kotlin, C#, Python I first thouhgt Go was a bad joke”
neutral · personal · challenge441 · 2020-07-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have built apps in native iOS (pre-swift), Android (Java), windows phone (c#)”
neutral · production · lukevp · 2020-06-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“If I somehow convinced my co-workers to adopt a language that wasn't C#, I'd point them Rust or Haskell instead.”
neutral · production · FridgeSeal · 2020-06-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I refactored the calculation and report production code into a library, and since that time we've built a Mac version and Web version”
neutral · production · mb_72 · 2020-05-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we hit a bug in the C# compiler in regards to struct layouts (!!) we switched away from rolling our own.”
neutral · production · com2kid · 2020-03-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm running real code in prod that I've tested this way.”
neutral · production · sterlind · 2020-02-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“a lot of back-end services that used to be build in C# and ASP”
neutral · production · moksly · 2019-12-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I currently build deterministic multiplayer WebGL games in Unity, built via C#->IL2CPP->Emscripten->WASM.”
neutral · production · reitzensteinm · 2019-12-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My current shop is the oldest shop I've ever worked for and is entirely a Windows/C# shop.”
neutral · production · hermitdev · 2019-09-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our operations engineers do Microsoft servers and our developers do C#.”
neutral · production · moksly · 2019-07-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Ten years ago we build things in C#, used MSSQL and deployed to IIS.”
neutral · production · jaabe · 2019-03-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“by then I was the most experienced C# developer, the only experienced C++/MFC developer”
neutral · production · 3 yr · scarface74 · 2018-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we may be able to remove the C# code but that's still years off for my group.”
neutral · production · MrRadar · 2018-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using C# for years.”
neutral · personal · danabramov · 2018-12-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“C#, Unity, Unreal, CG/GLSL/HLSL, most recently Blender.”
neutral · personal · dave7 · 2018-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The core synchronization logic is shared C# code.”
neutral · production · gwbas1c · 2018-12-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm really curious why, as a C# dev who's used it for many years.”
neutral · production · Merad · 2018-12-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we were predominantly a C# house”
neutral · production · eksemplar · 2018-10-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I started C# full force around 2005 or so and have been using it ever since.”
neutral · production · 12 yr · Clubber · 2017-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Even my university taught in C# for the first year.”
neutral · personal · hacker_9 · 2017-12-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I use Unity so the app code is C#”
neutral · personal · fnayr · 2017-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use their C# API so it's all transparent to us.”
neutral · production · exhilaration · 2017-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've seen code very much like this in production c#”
neutral · production · flukus · 2017-11-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we switched our defaults and ran a utility to convert all our C# code”
neutral · production · shoover · 2017-10-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I could knock out a CF based web app much faster than I can today with C# ASP.NET.”
neutral · production · brixon · 2017-10-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I can write c#, vb6 and .net, frontend I can do JavaScript, php, tie into MySQL”
neutral · production · marak830 · 2017-09-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“my enterprise experience is at a place with a dozen people & we use very few tools. It's a C# shop mostly”
neutral · production · __s · 2016-12-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“wrote a connection pool class in C# from scratch that has been in production for 2 years without a hiccup.”
neutral · production · 2 yr · alistproducer2 · 2016-12-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“At my day job, we use C#, with little focus on immutability. Performance has been a huge problem lately.”
neutral · production · marxama · 2016-12-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using Node pretty heavily (moving from more C# on the backend)”
neutral · production · tracker1 · 2016-12-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been building up a little library of utilities that work with Haxe's other compilation targets - mainly JS, C++, Python, and C# for me.”
neutral · personal · rpeden · 2016-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“bridge the divide from the mainframe world to the rest of the company's C#/.Net application infrastructure”
neutral · production · oldprogrammer2 · 2016-05-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Then I needed to do some C# work and I really liked LINQ.”
neutral · production · a-saleh · 2016-04-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I once had the pleasure of replacing a BizTalk server with 50 lines of C#.”
neutral · production · mrweasel · 2015-12-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it's a huge bit of friction for a developer trying to introduce C# into their shop”
neutral · personal · StevePerkins · 2015-07-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“in a previous life, I was reasonably proficient in C# (that's the CLR 2.0 timeframe”
neutral · production · nathanb · 2015-07-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My company has enough trouble finding developers qualified to play with C#.”
neutral · production · archon · 2015-07-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm used to C# and Java, where dependencies are always dynamically linked”
neutral · personal · moron4hire · 2015-06-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“After trying Protobuf on a project between C# and Javascript”
neutral · production · lux · 2015-06-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use C, C++, C# among other languages.”
neutral · production · HeyLaughingBoy · 2014-12-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using VS 2013 Community for a few days now, for C#/MVC work.”
neutral · personal · atlantic · 2014-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using public readonly fields instead for a number of years now because of the constant boilerplate.”
neutral · production · louthy · 2014-11-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Even while working as a CE I was automating AutoCAD with Lisp and C# to make my design work faster.”
neutral · production · wilsonfiifi · 2014-09-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we rewrote most of the functionality we used in C# over a couple of weekends.”
neutral · production · bananas · 2014-03-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“usually it's native, or at least something like Python or C#.”
neutral · production · kabdib · 2013-12-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm always being pushed outside my comfort zone (C# developer thrust into deep embedded development!)”
neutral · production · com2kid · 2013-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I wrote a C# web app and hosted it in production on Linux for a few months and then had to re-write it in .NET MVC”
neutral · production · socialist_coder · 2013-12-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“At work, my Git repos are exclusively C# and I've been using SemanticMerge for resolving conflicts to good effect.”
neutral · production · taspeotis · 2013-11-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I had a boot camp partition running windows so I could still develop our C#-based web product.”
neutral · production · taude · 2013-10-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have tended to use MSSQL+C# historically for business apps”
neutral · production · eitally · 2013-07-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we compile the resulting linked IL to ARM code, and then we run the result using the C linker”
neutral · production · migueldeicaza · 2013-02-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“CraftStudio is built in C# with XNA.”
neutral · production · elisee · 2012-12-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“then with c# (Unity 3d) and java.”
neutral · production · __--__ · 2012-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Last time I wrote C# code was because Microsoft (then a client) demanded we run our application on a Windows server.”
neutral · production · rbanffy · 2012-11-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“In production environments we at least have extensions methods in c#”
neutral · production · Roybatty · 2012-11-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“instead of using Objective-C we use C# (http://iknode.com).”
neutral · production · aespinoza · 2012-11-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using git & git-svn for all my c# projects”
neutral · personal · michaelherndon · 2011-12-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“C# for UI heavy tools (this is relatively recent, C++ is also still used for a lot of tools)”
neutral · production · Ogre · 2011-11-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use MS Visual Studio to build WPF desktop apps (what MS is calling "Windows Clients" this week) in C#.”
neutral · production · Corvus · 2011-11-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using exceptions in an environment (C#) that matches the author's JSON.parse() example very well.”
neutral · production · Lagged2Death · 2011-11-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm using CouchDB for my store and NLog (said servers are C#) for the library.”
neutral · production · ConstantineXVI · 2011-10-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“And yes we do feature flags in both Javascript and C# side.”
neutral · production · darkxanthos · 2011-09-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Visual Studio 2008 / C# 3 for most programming (corporate coder here)”
neutral · production · mullr · 2010-11-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“as good at C#/Silverlight (I've been using .NET professionaly since its debut)”
neutral · production · city41 · 2010-10-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“if I'm going to write stuff in C# I'm doing it on the Microsoft stack.”
neutral · production · mattw · 2010-05-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?