dotnet/csharplang

The official repo for the design of the C# programming language.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

Yup. That's what drove it into the ground. Corporate refused to acknowledge that it couldn't effectively compete with free versions of .NET and Java and Python at a high-3-figures minimum-SKU price point.

HaloFour

@HaloFour

As I recall it, the minimum SKU wasn't exactly sufficient for business app development either. I recall Borland's site implying that if you needed DB connectivity that the price was several thousand.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

Yup. It's gotten better over the years, but... too little too late.

HaloFour

@HaloFour

I don't doubt that Delphi was the better product but it's definitely hard to compete with VB when your product is an order of magnitude more expensive

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

It kind of depends. If you're a software company with a budget, that hardly matters.

What does matter, though, is when your software company can't hire any devs because no one knows how to use your programming language because they weren't taught it in school and didn't pick it up as a hobby because there were plenty of free alternatives available.

Antony Male

@canton7

Heh, I do consultancy stuff where we constantly have to pick up new languages/tools. The cost of training someone up on a new language has to be a small fraction of the cost of hiring someone in the first place, surely?

HaloFour

@HaloFour

I was taught Pascal in school, but no cheap business wants to pay more than they have to for tools :)

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

Training someone on the basic syntax and semantics is easy, if they're already a competent programmer. Training someone to know and internalize the idiomatic patterns of the language and be familiar with its ecosystem? That takes years.

HaloFour

@HaloFour

@canton7 I think that's largely true, at least within languages of similar paradigms. Probably more effort to learn the differences of any given framework than the syntax of the language.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

no cheap business wants to pay more than they have to for tools

Which is why so many of them go out of business. Being cheap often means not understanding the difference between a cost and an investment. Remember, you make your money when you buy, not when you sell.

HaloFour

@HaloFour

Which is why the investment needs to demonstrate why it's worth the cost and how it has better ROI.

It didn't help Borland that VB programmers were substantially more common and generally less expensive as well.

Antony Male

@canton7

Training someone on the basic syntax and semantics is easy, if they're already a competent programmer. Training someone to know and internalize the idiomatic patterns of the language and be familiar with its ecosystem? That takes years.

I'm not sure years is fair. Months, sure. Years gets you the equivalent of someone who reads all the language design meeting minutes, and you don't need that to be a competent programmer. But the cost of hiring someone is measured in months' salary anyway, and you're getting some level of value before they're fully competent

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

It didn't help Borland that VB programmers were substantially more common and generally less expensive as well.

Yeah, that's the next step from my "what does matter," above. When companies have trouble hiring devs for your language, it makes them less inclined to use your language.

And they never understood that. It's the same old story of the Blockbuster executives who, even in the face of Netflix bearing down on them like a steamroller approaching a cartoon coyote, didn't want to get rid of late fees because they were bringing in too much money.

COCPORN

@COCPORN

I am a little stumped at something I am seeing. I am implementing an interface and deriving from an abstract class which implements some of the methods in the interface. Yet VS and the compiler both seem to force me to implement the methods in the derived class. There is a 100% chance I am doing this wrong, yet I cannot really see how. Any gut reactions that would help me on my journey to create the best rock song ever?

COCPORN

@COCPORN

Figured it out. I will go find my seat at the back of the shortbus. :) Thanks for being my rubber duck.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

What was the problem?

Sam

@MgSam

Will the "Summer of C#" have public meeting notes?

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

I would recommend asking Fred that on discord.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

After enabling nullables, I think the single most irritating issue it causes is all the gratuitous !s I have to stick on the end of ToString calls to shut the compiler up. Whose brillant idea was it to specify that as returning string? :interrobang:

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

Oh, here's a fun one I just ran across.

Action<Foo> bar = myObj != null ? myObj.MyMethod : someOtherAction; //perfectly valid
Action<Foo> bar = myObj?.MyMethod ?? someOtherAction; //compiler error CS8978: 'method group' cannot be made nullable

What the what?

HaloFour

@HaloFour

I guess because method groups don't really have a type?

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

Whose brillant idea was it to specify that as returning string? :interrobang:

This was the runtime

You're welcome to leave them feedback

However that signature is accurate as there are cases where types return null for To string

ToString

So if you don't annotate that correctly, you could end up in places where you still get a null ref at runtime.

What the what?

Feel free to open language discussion at dotnet/csharplang if you want this to be supported.

In this case it would likely be a request about inference working in ?? (Though I haven't investigated to see if that's what is the issue here)

Antony Male

@canton7

After enabling nullables, I think the single most irritating issue it causes is all the gratuitous !s I have to stick on the end of ToString calls to shut the compiler up. Whose brillant idea was it to specify that as returning string? :interrobang:

@masonwheeler https://stackoverflow.com/a/69944733/1086121

So unless you're calling object.ToString(), or calling ToString on a generic type, the signature almost certainly returns a non-nullable string. When you override ToString, the VS-generated code returns string

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

...so why exactly is a variable declared inside a do ... while block considered "not in scope" in the while clause?

Antony Male

@canton7

I suspect simply, because traditionally the { and } introduce a new scope.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler

https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/discussions/6340

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

Primarily because that's kinda how blocks work. I can't think of any case where sometime defined in a block leak into an outer scope.

David Arno

@DavidArno

Not sure if anyone uses this these days but just in case, I’m trying to communicate with @CyrusNajmabadi but he seems determined to censor every post I make and won’t explain his actions. Hoping I can engage him here in a private chat to try and get to the bottom of things.

Bernd Baumanns

@bernd5

you can try on discord

David Arno

@DavidArno

@bernd5 thanks I didn’t realise discord supported private messages. I’ve tried there too. Cheers.

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

Since it was brought up here. The posts were hidden for being off topic. Posts on GitHub.com/dotnet/csharplang have to be on the discussion topic they are on.

David Arno

@DavidArno

Yes, you already said that in the discussion itself. It's a great shame that MS have allowed someone like yourself to be a moderator of such an important forum. But they have, and I just have to "suck it up" as there's nothing I can do about that.

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

@DavidArno I cannot respond on discord as you have left the server.

It's a great shame that MS have allowed someone like yourself to be a moderator of such an important forum.

Everyone in the dotnet org can moderate dotnet communities.

As mentioned in the thread and offline, we ask that people keep their posts on topic. Continued off topic posts will be marked as such.

and I just have to "suck it up" as there's nothing I can do about that.

Correct. You need to follow the rules of these communities if you wish to continue being allowed to participate in them.

CyrusNajmabadi

@CyrusNajmabadi

If you're not ok with the literal project owners and repo maintainers moderating their own forums, I'm not sure what to tell you.

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