Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of where .NET is headed, C# the language (which is an entirely separate beast) has, in my humble opinion, become the most damn awesome all-around language.

It's got all the awesome features most of which are very elegantly implemented and accessible in a very streamlined fashion. Obviously if you hate C-syntax, C# isn't going to win any brownie points, but in terms of sheer power and flexibility, C# 5.0 steals the cake by a huge margin. Lambdas, parallelization, anonymous functions, interop with C functions, fast compilation, "fast" execution, awesome bytecode, and more. Constantly iterating, but not breaking with the original design goals.

It's borrowed the right features from the right languages, the right syntax from the right languages, and the right design choices from the right languages.

(Although I do dislike how the new dynamic keyword is implemented. It throws then catches too many exceptions under the hood and people really need to understand it before they use it. It was primarily designed to convert unknown/random JSON to a C# object on the fly and should not be abused. Many people coming from dynamically-typed, loosely-defined languages might think it's an easy way of adapting to the traditionally statically-typed and statically-defined C#... not so.)

(And, like it or not, it really is a cross-platform language. Mono does count and is pretty awesome. Esp. if you think about the compatibility of the language and not the framework.)

I'm still a die-hard C/C++ coder, but C# won my heart a long time ago.

Start with the name, ".NET". What were they referring to when they chose that name very carefully? They were referring to the web.

C# 5.0? Take a look at this example code from the MSDN blog which is "showing off" the new features of C# 5.0. (It was formatted this way with no indentation on the blog). This example, not by coincidence, demonstrates how .NET interfaces with the web.

    private async void
    btnTest_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 

    { 

    var request = WebRequest.Create(txtUrl.Text.Trim()); 

    var content = new MemoryStream(); 

    Task<WebResponse> responseTask = request.GetResponseAsync(); 

    using (var response = await responseTask) 

    {

    using (var
    responseStream = response.GetResponseStream()) 

    { 

    Task copyTask = responseStream.CopyToAsync(content); 

    //await operator to supends the excution of the method until the task is completed. In the meantime, 
    the control is returned the UI thread. 

    await copyTask; 

    } 

    } 

    txtResult.Text = content.Length.ToString(); 

    }

What does that code do? It works behind a form running on the desktop, where you press a button to do an async HTTP request and display the content length of the response.

First of all, why would I want to create an application that runs on the desktop, rather than build a web application that I can show to people with a link? Especially

If I were going to do the same thing with a web application then I would probably do something like this in CoffeeScript:

    $.get $('#url').val(), (res) -> $('#res').val res.length

I'm sorry, but I don't see C# as being the most damn awesome all-around language. I like CoffeeScript, or maybe even better, LiveScript (http://livescript.net). Or failing that, plain-old JavaScript.

I think a closer equivalent of your CoffeScript code in C# would be

    var HtmlLength = new WebClient().DownloadString("http://news.ycombinator.com").Length;

or if you want the length in bytes:

    var ByteLength = new WebClient().DownloadData("http://news.ycombinator.com").Length;

Want to do it asynchronously?

    var ByteLength = new WebClient().DownloadDataTaskAsync(url).Length;

That code sample you posted is to demonstrate in a rather loquacious fashion the new C# 5.0 features.

As for why create a desktop application rather than a web-based app, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. Apples and oranges.

That's not a fantastic code sample, but its purpose is to show off the async / await keyword. There's no point in criticizing it for not being a web app... I do wish, however, that MSDN blogs put more focus on good, idiomatic C#, formatted properly, but they so often come up short, only doing one thing adequately while failing at all others.

For one, you're criticizing a web API here and not the C# language-- and you've failed to even do that convincingly since it's an intentionally verbose example using an outdated API.

res.Text = (await new HtppClient().GetStringAsync(url.Text)).Length.ToString();

(Disclaimer: I work at MS.)

Well, that's not bad, but I think the CoffeeScript is better

    $.get $('#url').val(), (res) -> $('#res').val res.length

Or using LiveScript backcalls is even cooler:

    data <-! $.get '/x.html'
    $ \.res .val data

Or in IcedCoffeeScript if you like 'await'

    await $.get 'documentation/css/docs.css', defer res
    console.log res

Or check out the huge list of languages that compile to JavaScript at http://altjs.org/

> First of all, why would I want to create an application that runs on the desktop, rather than build a web application that I can show to people with a link? Especially

To take proper advantage of the hardware and provide proper integration with the operating system.

The browser is for documents.

I don't think you know enough about .NET, C#, or even web applications in general, to effectively comment on this subject.

I agree. C# is a very robust, professionally designed language. I enjoy using it through Mono.

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