Back in 2007 I took a job programming legacy database driven ASP sites which I updated to ASP.NET. The job dried up in 2008 but I kept programming up until 2010. Then Microsoft got too expensive to maintain and everything kept changing every six months with new tech that was coming out. I forget most of the details but things like Linq came and went but was sort of incorporated into the database framework but it was different, then MVC replaced a lot of everything then Core was separated out or something. I just couldn't keep up with the constant changes. I eventually left Microsoft behind and picked up Python and FastAPI. They are easy and fast to develop but I miss the structure of the C# language and the speed of the .NET apps.

I'm interested in getting back into programming with .NET and mostly ASP.NET Core 7, Razor and Blazor.

My question is are things completely changing every 10 minutes or have these particular technologies mature and here to stay? I don't want to have to learn stuff only to have it deprecated 5 months later.

Everything has various adherents and lots varies by industry and product.

The bulk here that I’ve seen is primarily Java (Kotlin and variants) and DotNetCore, with some Go and Python/R. We can docker container it all now, so the lean is to do that where possible.

Oh, and a sliver of Swift for iOS mobile team. This is all within a Fortune 100 financial concern. YMMV.

Oh man. The last place I worked, we used C#, MVC, Linq in various flavors, SQL Server, that whole stack. We had it figured out and knew how to make it do what we needed it to do.

Then one of our senior engineers started looking at AWS and Node-JS and decided that was the way to go forward. Management backed him and we were all told we would have to start learning all the new stuff. It's not just the programming language that changes, it's the entire development and deployment infrastructure. And massive re-training.

It was one of the reasons I decided to retire a couple years earlier than I had planned. That and the DEI shit they were force feeding us.

.NET, Core, Razor, all of that isn't going anywhere, it's too deeply entrenched. Major development efforts will, I think, be divided between the Microsoft .NET and Amazon AWS stacks. Either should be a viable career path for some time to come. I never worked in ASP, mostly MVC, so I can't speak to how the MS community splits out between them.

There will always be new things coming up every 10 minutes, or so it seems, but the Big Boys will rule the roost for quite a while yet. I also have no idea how AI will affect this, maybe somebody else has some insight on that.

Dot Net 8.0 is the latest and greatest. Core is a bit of a different animal than dot Net 4.x. I haven't heard much about Razor and or Blazor being used in the last year of so. Most of the UI that we deal with is java script using React. There is at least one technology you would want to get yourself up to speed on and that is Entity Framework core. It's a bit of a different animal than the classic EF but not that hard to make the jump to. There are a few improvements to the Linq query library and definitely worth learning.
One other thing that you might want to be aware of for your APIs and that is dependency injection. Again not hard to learn but different than "newing" up an object on an as needed basis.

This guy is really good at teaching and not a drain to watch https://www.youtube.com/@IAmTimCorey

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:
Oh man. The last place I worked, we used C#, MVC, Linq in various flavors, SQL Server, that whole stack. We had it figured out and knew how to make it do what we needed it to do.

Then one of our senior engineers started looking at AWS and Node-JS and decided that was the way to go forward. Management backed him and we were all told we would have to start learning all the new stuff. It's not just the programming language that changes, it's the entire development and deployment infrastructure. And massive re-training. ...

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Not only couldn’t I keep track of everything, I also had to invest a ton of money into Visual Studio and server software upgrades. Just couldn’t do it.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
Dot Net 8.0 is the latest and greatest. Core is a bit of a different animal than dot Net 4.x. I haven't heard much about Razor and or Blazor being used in the last year of so. Most of the UI that we deal with is java script using React. There is at least one technology you would want to get yourself up to speed on and that is Entity Framework core. It's a bit of a different animal than the classic EF but not that hard to make the jump to. There are a few improvements to the Linq query library and definitely worth learning.
One other thing that you might want to be aware of for your APIs and that is dependency injection. Again not hard to learn but different than "newing" up an object on an as needed basis.

This guy is really good at teaching and not a drain to watch https://www.youtube.com/@IAmTimCorey

I got into EF at the end. It was really good even then. Linq is awesome.

Thanks for the link. I’ve followed that guy before.

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:

.NET, Core, Razor, all of that isn't going anywhere, it's too deeply entrenched. Major development efforts will, I think, be divided between the Microsoft .NET and Amazon AWS stacks. Either should be a viable career path for some time to come. I never worked in ASP, mostly MVC, so I can't speak to how the MS community splits out between them.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive. I have Core code in containers in EKS, and Frameworks stuff on Windows EC2. Though, all future bits are going Core.

Microsoft does a pretty decent job of not making too many breaking changes when moving from one version of .NET Core to the next. In fact, unless you're doing some off-the-wall stuff, most of your code will run just fine when updating - and with Microsoft .NET, you should plan on updating every year or so just to get the latest security updates if nothing else.

I use Razor in my job on one of my projects, and I kind of view it as a modern version of ASP.NET WebForms - it's not sexy, but it gets the job done, and it *should* be around for at least another decade. I haven't touched Blazor, but I really don't think it's ready for prime time yet.

Also, Microsoft changed their licensing and pricing model significantly since you probably last looked. You can now get a 'Community Edition' version of Visual Studio for free, with everything you will need to develop for the Microsoft ecosystem. I'm not sure about SqlServer pricing, but you can probably do what you want for free until you want to ship your code. My advice would be to check out Postgres - it's free, Microsoft has great integration from a coding standpoint, and you really can't tell a difference when running it that you're not on SqlServer. we developed a huge application at work using SqlServer for our database, then, we got the word to deploy everything to AWS (yuk) and I ended up converting our SqlServer database over to Postgres. From an entity framework perspective, not much changed in my code. Sure, I had to change some types in my models, but it was a fairly easy transition. Might be worth checking out.

I would recommend you check it out, and don't worry about all the Microsoft churn. Just keep updating your versions of .NET, and your code and your skills should be relevant for a long, long time.

I jumped from ASP.NET to Python a while back for similar reasons, but I’ve been following .NET Core since then. The good news is that ASP.NET Core, Razor, and Blazor seem to have found their groove. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into refining these technologies rather than just swapping them out every few months. You’ll still see updates and new features, but they’re more about enhancing what’s already there. If you're thinking about getting back into .NET, now’s a solid time—there's a lot of stability in those frameworks right now.

quote:

Originally posted by rcpylon:
I jumped from ASP.NET to Python a while back for similar reasons, but I’ve been following .NET Core since then. The good news is that ASP.NET Core, Razor, and Blazor seem to have found their groove. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into refining these technologies rather than just swapping them out every few months. You’ll still see updates and new features, but they’re more about enhancing what’s already there. If you're thinking about getting back into .NET, now’s a solid time—there's a lot of stability in those frameworks right now.

I manage 2 DBAs, 4 UI devs, and 4 API devs. I also do a fair amount of coding myself. My UI devs dropped the idea of either Razor or Blazor due to the fact that they would have a difficult time writing a single page app in either that would provide the same user experience as React. I believe them but I am way more of a middle tier to db engineer. I can say that (and the UI devs confirm it) going with React makes it much more difficult to be a "full stack" engineer. (FYI, I have seen very very few full stack engineers that are good at all aspects) Mark123, you might want to disregard my previous post about React if you are looking to write code from db to web page. Rcpylon's advice of Razor or Blazor will get you there much faster.

quote:

Originally posted by 4x5:
... My advice would be to check out Postgres - it's free, Microsoft has great integration from a coding standpoint, and you really can't tell a difference when running it that you're not on SqlServer. ...

I've been running Postgres for about 3 years now.

quote:

Originally posted by rcpylon:
I jumped from ASP.NET to Python a while back for similar reasons, but I’ve been following .NET Core since then. The good news is that ASP.NET Core, Razor, and Blazor seem to have found their groove. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into refining these technologies rather than just swapping them out every few months. You’ll still see updates and new features, but they’re more about enhancing what’s already there. If you're thinking about getting back into .NET, now’s a solid time—there's a lot of stability in those frameworks right now.

Yeah, it's time. I think I'm going to need a team for this project though. I intended to do this about 14 years ago but just got too busy with my job.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:

quote:

Originally posted by rcpylon:
I jumped from ASP.NET to Python a while back for similar reasons, but I’ve been following .NET Core since then. The good news is that ASP.NET Core, Razor, and Blazor seem to have found their groove. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into refining these technologies rather than just swapping them out every few months. You’ll still see updates and new features, but they’re more about enhancing what’s already there. If you're thinking about getting back into .NET, now’s a solid time—there's a lot of stability in those frameworks right now.

I manage 2 DBAs, 4 UI devs, and 4 API devs. I also do a fair amount of coding myself. My UI devs dropped the idea of either Razor or Blazor due to the fact that they would have a difficult time writing a single page app in either that would provide the same user experience as React. I believe them but I am way more of a middle tier to db engineer. I can say that (and the UI devs confirm it) going with React makes it much more difficult to be a "full stack" engineer. (FYI, I have seen very very few full stack engineers that are good at all aspects) Mark123, you might want to disregard my previous post about React if you are looking to write code from db to web page. Rcpylon's advice of Razor or Blazor will get you there much faster.

No decisions have been made so far.

My desire is to make a scheduling, time tracking, invoicing, credit accepting app that also keeps track of the business checkbook. Do away with all the duplicate inputs across multiple apps.

I'm using a paid service now for scheduling but it just doesn't work how I need it to work and it also doesn't accept the payments in a way that works for me. If someone has a late payment it only clears out the current invoice leaving the past one to keep bothering them for payment. It's not very good but it's also not very expensive.

I started this project in 2010 but it dried up when I couldn't agree with the other tech on how it should work.

I'm sure you'll do well Mark123. Don't be afraid to post your db, api, and UI architecture here (I know you won't). Pretty sure this will be a fun project for you if you decide to go forward. One bit of advice: Your code never get's worse on a re-write cuz you learned something on previous go-arounds