C# is thriving. So why are so many people ready to write it off?
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Another day, another clickbait article about why C# is sick. Or dying. Or already dead (you just don’t know it yet). As a person who’s written a lot about dead and dying Microsoft technologies (see my pieces on Silverlight, Access, VB, Expression Studio, and ASP.NET Web Forms), I’ll be the first gravedigger when the time comes to put C# in the ground. But in the meanwhile, my focus is on a different question — what’s behind this sudden explosion of wrong-headed hot takes?
We could talk about the desperate lengths people go to to get a few picoseconds of attention in today’s hyped-up social media world. But I prefer to respond to the underlying anxiety that leads otherwise sensible developers to panic about one of the world’s top 5 programming languages.
Of course it’s true — C# won’t live forever. The best authority on that question is Microsoft program manager and keeper of the C# language specification Mads Torgersen. In a perceptive interview a few years ago, Mads was asked about feature sprawl and C#’s future:
“Most programming languages have a life expectancy. One common tipping point is where the language becomes…