I’ve been a C# developer for a decade, before that I worked with Java. These days I mostly work with Typescript as we use it both for our client programming and for our backend which increasingly consists of Node micro-services running as Azure functions. If you had told me that I would be writing backends in JavaScript five years from now back in 2017. I would have likely considered you to be crazy. Yet here we are.

Before I worry you too much let me tell you that I’m not at all religious about programming languages. It’s just that using the same language for the front and back end is very convenient, and now that Typescript (and Node) are actually good enough, also possible. Which leads me to the point I want to make here. Over the years both C# and Java have also gotten much, much, better. But because programming languages and environments in general, have become much, much better, there is rarely a reason to chose a technology based on its tech-specs. Heresy to most people, I know, I know, but we aren’t Netflix. Our most expensive resource isn’t how much iron we burn in Azure, it’s our developers and the speed at which they can deliver reliable and safe applications.

I think it will become increasingly hard to “bring developers back” in this world. Because why would we come back? .Net has seen some really awesome innovation in recent years, and is still seeing it, and yet we’ve moved away from C# and onto Typescript (still benefiting from a lot of .net stuff in azure functions), and .Net moves much faster than Java. So I doubt it, but I hope someone makes it anyway.