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.NET Core Roadmap

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61 pointsjackfoxy19 comments

.NET Core really needs to figure out how to become somewhat accessible. I (.NET <= 4.6 developer as my day job) recently tried to setup a new project after it hit 1.0 and I was extremely disappointed.

The first step was to create a new project, okay cool. `dotnet new MyProject` -- oh wait I want it to be a class library. Let's see `dotnet --help`, hmm I don't see an option (at least not when I tried). Oh `dotnet new MyProject -t lib`, of course!

Okay lets add xUnit and xUnit-runner. There is no simple command line utilty that I saw to add them, so I have to manually edit the project.json file (wait isn't this supposed to be csproj again?). Oh wait there are weird compatibility issues between all the .NET Core versions, I have to manually go look it up on the xUnit page (https://xunit.github.io/docs/getting-started-dotnet-core.htm...). Okay I have the correct version listed, let's run my first test.

Error... Oh the created class library is targeting netstandard15, which I thought was all I needed? I need to add netcore50. Some other unexplained error occurred and I gave up for the time being. Yea maybe I could have sat through it an persevered, but why should I? Why should it all be so complicated and require two different frameworks just to get a small class library and a test project going.

Was I using it wrong? Most likely, but oh well. It was frustrating enough for me to just not continue with it. .NET Core fatigue feels more real than JavaScript fatigue.

I'd recommend using the tutorials rather than just typing stuff and seeing what happens. The language and concepts are the same, but there are some big differences at the framework and platform level.

The xUnit tutorial is here: https://www.microsoft.com/net/tutorials/csharp/getting-start...

Those tutorials are pretty intro level, but they do cover some of the issues you ran into.

Also, I'd recommend checking out the new Visual Studio 2017 RC with updated .NET Core tools and support for the csproj based projects: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/12/12/updating-...

I just took a brief look at the tutorial and it would still get me caught up on the same issues. The class library created by `dotnet new -t lib` had a different target framework than most tutorials, and short of just copying and pasting in a whole new project.json file (which changes the target framework and imports two more) I am out of luck. It's pretty confusing and tiring!

In Visual Studio 2017 RC it's "File / New / xUnit Test Project" and you're all set.

I think some of the docs and presentations have gone a little far to the everything-commandline direction. If you're an experienced .NET dev, you're probably going to be a lot more comfortable with Visual Studio at least to get started. Much easier to start with some working code and break it / play with it than to start at the command line and a project file... again, if you're an experienced .NET dev who's used to Visual Studio.

I will agree with your main point that it is confusing and that it should be easier. Those are actually some of the top things listed on the roadmap.

Admittedly, I would be much better off using VS to create the project/install packages/etc but I thought I no longer needed to, hell they were providing yeoman generators for .NET Core (but they weren't always updated at the same time as a new release)!

If you need a GUI to guide you through each step and can't take an hour or two to learn the platform you are using every single day then you should probably just wait until VS2017 comes out.

The CLI is new to .NET Core, and .NET Framework/.NET Core are practically different platforms. Despite that, I don't get why I should struggle that much trying to get a simple empty project going.

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but, while the .NET Core has hit RTM, the tooling is always marked as being a "Preview" for good reason. (https://www.microsoft.com/net/core)

They've got a solid idea on how to work .NET Core, the desktop .NET framework and .NET Standard as the bridge, but the tooling for .NET Core work is undergoing frequent revisions.

It's really not that complicated. You described pretty much all the trouble in less than a paragraph. It sounded like 10 minutes of fiddling around.

For creating a cross platform library that just works it's pretty painless. Have you tried java/maven? Or webpack? Or god forbid cross platform C++?

Your problem seems to be focused on the fact that command line interfaces are not discoverable. This is true of all command line interfaces. Linux/Unix has many utilities that are quite foreign at first. But once you learn the interface (and in this case it is quite simple) you can accomplish things with quite a bit of efficiency.

I don't know, I don't think my main problem was with the CLI rather how hard it was to just get something small going. In contrast, node takes all of 5 seconds to setup a small library, install dependencies, clearly list required engine, etc. Is it perfect, no way; however, it isn't very complicated either.

I don't think I'm totally alone with that sentiment either. .NET Core was a project that had pretty high expectations from the beginning, a cross-platform, sane and simpler .NET development platform (C#/F# too!).

Maybe this little script of mine could help you (dni=dot net init helper) https://github.com/divbit/dni

It does dot net init and a pre set up library.

.NET Core has been a bittersweet experience. At one angle the ideals behind .NET Core are fantastic and it will open up C# to become ubiquitous like Java. On the other hand, their development process makes me want to throw it back at Microsoft. Developers were allowed to head up into their ivory towers. Even to this day they're coming up with ways to explain how the "tooling" is still beta or broken. The .NET Core developers obviously just cared about the fun internal stuff and left us to handle the ugly, real world stuff ourselves. If they cared, they would have built tooling alongside the framework.

It has been almost six months since the .NET Core release and we still don't have the "proper" tooling. They haven't done SignalR either. I've never been held in limbo for so long. The only reason I'm hanging on is because of C# and Visual Studio.

I don't even know what the significance of the ".NET Core 2.0" or ".NET Standard 2.0" releases are anymore, the amount of complexity added to the development decision making process in .NET Core got out of hand many months ago. I'm not the only serious .NET developer who is feeling puzzled about the purpose of all this. Sure, it was an interesting idea, but man the execution could have been better.

I feel the same. Even as a .net developer, I'm really struggling to care about .NET Core. My experiences trying to use it have been bad, and the communication around the whole project has been worse.

Have they decided not to support FreeBSD, or it's just extremely low priority? I could swear I remember that being listed as a supported platform early on in the project.

Edit: Ahh, okay, "Support the community extending CoreCLR in various ways (e.g. FreeBSD support)" https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/...

Funny you should ask..I started this journey right here on HN. Still yet again haven't had time to get back into it but I will take your comment as a suggestion to try harder to find time for this. There is more information about this here (if you are interested in the answer to "why" it hasn't made it yet): https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/10610

> Continue to improve how you run .NET Core applications in Azure

This makes it sound like a sales pitch for Azure

That's what MS developer tools are becoming.

And to be honest, it's kind of working. I'm still in the Kotlin/IDEA camp for now, but at my shop we're a dual stack (.NET and Java for enterprise reasons) and MS tools and Azure are getting seriously better. Once .NET core reaches maturity and has 95%+ of .NET's standard libraries available, we might even consider a full move to .NET as our automated processes and sysadmins are more experienced with linux.

2 years are passed and .NET Core lost its window of opportunities. The next step? A dumpster can IMHO.

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