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Comment by euroclydon | Hacker News Reader

I program in Ruby, JS, Python, and C#. I love the dynamic and functional aspects of JS and Python. Once you get up and rolling with a C# project, using all the new v3.5 and v4.0 features is very pleasurable, but the facts that it's a compiled language, all but requires Visual Studio to be effective, and that getting a project up and running can be such a pain, all create a barrier to entry and to simply playing around with it. On the other hand, you do have the dynamic .NET languages like IronRuby and IronPython to play with, but you write code totally different in them than you do in C#, so it's really an either/or situation, which doesn't help.

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Why is getting a project up and a running a pain? I can get a simple project up and running (a simple dialog with four buttons that moves a ball in the window) in about five minutes. That's from a no VS, to starting VS, creating the solution, writing the code, compiling, and running the app.

How long should it take? And note, most of the time is spent writing the code (~4 minutes).

Speaking for myself, it's not getting a "project" up and running that's a pain, it's getting a single line of code up and running. I don't like to have to make a project (or even a Main method) to do that; I would prefer a REPL.

When working on a big project, if I want to just test out a piece of code, I actually find myself launching the project, pausing it, and using the "Immediate" window in Visual Studio as a REPL, even though it's inconvenient for the purpose.

For REPL, check out LINQPad. Its "Statement" and "Program" modes are great for that.

http://www.linqpad.net/CodeSnippetIDE.aspx

I also highly suggest supporting the developer of LINQPad by purchasing the auto completion (once you have evaluated the program). Its quite cheap for a licence, and makes the app twice as useful.

It just feels wrong when a dynamic language doesn't come with a dynamic interpreter.

C# isn't a dynamic language - it is totally static. The introduction of the "dynamic" keyword in 4.0 has confused some people into thinking it is truly a dynamic language, but in actuality that keyword is just a compiler hint that causes any references to that "dynamic" variable to use run-time reflection.

FWIW, I don't agree that it needs an IDE to be productive. I often write little utility apps in C# in a plain simple editor (joe - just syntax highlighting and auto-indent) and it works just fine, no more or less than if I was writing Java without an IDE. But then, C# not as verbose as Java.

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