Comment by jdw64

21 hours ago

C# is my strongest and favorite language. That said, it's frustrating that the C# framework ecosystem lacks solid options. MAUI is especially half-baked, and I'm really starting to doubt whether I should continue using XAML

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jdw64

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mynameisash  20 hours ago

C# used to be my favorite language, but having spent a lot of time in Rust using its algebraic data types + match statements + Option & Result types, then returning to C# to build a few moderately involved libraries, I'm horrified by the enums and null & error handling that I used to deal with all the time.

I knew that enums were really just named integer values and nothing more, but I had forgotten than you can build a perfectly legal enum from an integer out of the bounds of the enum's range. And a switch statement is non-exhaustive. (As I said, it had been a while since I used C# extensively.) What would have been a few lines of code in Rust turned into dozens to try to exhaustively protect against invalid input.

I know C# is a mature language that has been around for decades, but how janky everything feels comparatively really shocked me. I only very briefly played with F# about a decade ago, but my guess is that I could try to pick that up and call F# from C#, getting much better ergonomics with a combination of the two.

  • electroly  20 hours ago

    > I had forgotten than you can build a perfectly legal enum from an integer out of the bounds of the enum's range. And a switch statement is non-exhaustive

    These are solved by the new feature described in the article that we're commenting on right now. They're giving us unions and exhaustive switch. Ctrl+F "canonical way to work with unions" in the article to see an example. One of the best parts about C# is they never stop bringing useful features from other languages back home to us in C#. It makes for a large language with a lot of features, but if we really want something, we'll eventually get it in C#.

    • NetMageSCW  2 hours ago

      And one of the worst is how long it takes them to implement even simple things. There are parts of the language (Expression) that are 20 years behind the rest and they don’t see the problem.

noveltyaccount  5 hours ago

Same. I wish there was a good story for .NET UI on desktop, mobile, and web. I find Maui Blazor Hybrid to be pretty close. The desktop and mobile variants compile to a webview bound to native code (no WASM, no JS), and the Web variant compiled to WASM. Much leaner than Electron. Pretty clunky though last time I tried though that was three years ago.

bob1029  20 hours ago

Winforms is better than ever. You can use it with .NET10 and WebView2 is a thing now.

  • sedatk  1 hour ago

    Responsive UI, fluent styling, are they straightforward now, or do you still need to jump hoops?

    • bob1029  25 minutes ago

      WebView2 will cover all of these edges. If you are clever with web view environment and element reuse you can make the experience very smooth.

makotech221  21 hours ago

Winforms, wpf, blazor, maui, avalonia, what are you talking about

  • jdw64  21 hours ago

    Alright. I'm actually fine with WinForms and WPF since my factory floor codes depend on them. But the reality is they aren't expressive enough for modern UIs. XAML is an issue, and WPF is boilerplate hell. But then Blazor is too heavy, MAUI is broken and buggy, Avalonia is underwhelming, and WinUI 3 is an absolute nightmare.