News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by CharlieDigital on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @02:38PM (#50445212)

    > Being a Microsoft product is such a heavy baggage
Which I always found ironic because TypeScript (from the same guy that created C# even!), VS Code are both Microsoft. Microsoft also makes big contributions and investments in Postgres and Python as well.
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by bbkane on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @04:41PM (#50446702)
TypeScript has fewer competitors for the frontend than C# does for the backend
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by raincole on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @04:45PM (#50446731)
https://gist.github.com/matthiasak/c3c9c40d0f98ca91def1

JavaScript is one of the most common compile targets. "Who's the better JavaScript" was the most contested field a decade ago. These are not just toy languages - Facebook has Flow and Google has Dart. Both companies are far more web-adjacent than Microsoft. Yet Typescript won.

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by MiroslavPokorny on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:11PM (#50448602)
Did anyone ever explain why C# was not considered in the first place ?
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by angrysaki on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:24PM (#50448707)
Yes, it's because the structure of the existing codebase for the typescript compiler matched go better. (There's a blogpost about it somewhere)

edit: I think it was considered, but go was a better fit

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by MiroslavPokorny on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:10PM (#50449347)
What does "structure" even mean ? How or why are models so much easier in Go compared to other languages ?
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by afavour on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @11:38PM (#50449805)
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by mrsmrtss on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @01:57AM (#50450456)
Go models aren't easier, but the existing TypeScript codebase leaned heavily toward structural types, which made it a better match for Go and at least initially made porting easier for them.
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by littlecranky67 on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @02:18AM (#50450580)
Yes, Anders Hejlsberg did various times in podcasts when they announced the move go. It has nothing to do with C# not being capable enough, but rather that a line-by-line port from Typescript to Go would be easier. I think IIRC several time that had LLMs be more advanced as they are today, that choice would have been a different one.
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by bartread on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:28AM (#50450014)
It is weird now that you mention it. I worked in C# and .NET for a long time. In theory for 20 years. In practice I wasn't writing much C# after 2019 even though the team I led still used it.

I guess I... just got bored of it, and fed up of Microsoft. I came to hate Windows and having to work on Windows so much that it sort of tainted C# for me. I'm not saying I'd never use it again but, whilst it will run cross-platform nowadays, so will loads of other languages and frameworks, so it's never at the top of the list when it comes to choosing something for a new project.

As for TypeScript? Absolutely loathe it. I'll use it professionally when I have to, but I'd never use it for one of my own projects. It's just so ugly I don't even like looking at it. I get why people like it but, for me, it's not enough. If I'm staring at something all day then, I'm sorry, it can't be ugly.

But, strangely, I still use and enjoy VS Code from Microsoft, and have no plans to switch to anything else.

(I also still have an Office subscription - or whatever it is Microsoft are calling that suite nowadays, I don't care - because I still use both Excel and Word fairly frequently. I could probably get by without, but I actually quite like Office - even on the Mac.)

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by Turskarama on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:37AM (#50450052)
Ironic that you quit using it because of Windows right around the time you no longer needed to be on Windows to use it.
Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by bartread on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @07:29AM (#50452645)
I needed to be on Windows for work though and, sadly, often still do, so the association is strong.

The thing is, now most things I do target some flavour of Linux - and although I could write C# and target Linux with absolutely no problem - there are a lot of other options that C# has to complete with. Granted those options would also, at least in theory, have been viable options on Windows but it definitely would have felt a bit like paddling against the flow to host Ruby on Rails or Python or whatever on Windows.

And if I want to target command line or desktop with something cross-platform I'm going to compile to a native binary that requires minimal dependencies, so Rust feels like a more natural fit than C#, especially with Microsoft's desktop UI story being such a dog's breakfast (and even more-so when you account for cross-platform).

Again, in a commercial environment, I could imagine using Electron for that sort of thing because that's what most companies do (but because everything I do nowadays is backend, web, or systems integration, I haven't written a desktop app in a commercial context in 13 years, and I haven't written a command line app in that context since just before the pandemic). However, for my own projects I want to hew as closely as possible to my own principles and ideals and, for them, it'll be a cold day in hell before I ship a desktop or command line app that needs some giant runtime like Electron as a dependency.

Again, the point is that C#, whilst in many ways a great language, doesn't come out as the frontrunner.

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by CharlieDigital on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @07:01AM (#50452416)

    > As for TypeScript? Absolutely loathe it.
I just write my TS like I write my C#. They are similar enough, IMO. I ended up writing this as a precursor to our team's move from TS to C#: https://typescript-is-like-csharp.chrlschn.dev/

The main things I don't like about TS are the volatile tooling, bad habits from other devs (not declaring types), compromised ORMs, require lots of package hunting, and module system.

Language is fine, tho.

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by ExoticPearTree on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @03:35AM (#50451017)
Speaking of PostgreSQL and Microsoft, I was at at a presentation earlier this year and they are developing an underlying storage engine for it based on Azure Blob storage to get “instant” WAL replay across many replicas at once.

It was pretty impressive work to scale PostgreSQL.

Re:What's new in the .NET 11 runtime by dalyons on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:57AM (#50454900)
Sounds very similar to what Amazon has had with aurora postgres for many years now. Very effective but not novel from ms.