C#

Given that moving from the .NET Framework to .NET usually isn’t as simple as changing the target, it’s interesting that most developers are at least on the .NET (Core) train. At the same time, it’s surprising that a significant percentage of developers still maintain projects targeting .NET Framework 4.6 and earlier. I’m curious what’s keeping these projects from moving to 4.8.

I see it as a good thing that more devs are using the latest C# version. I wonder if they are moving more legacy apps to the newest .NET version, or just creating new apps and systems and leaving the old legacy code behind.

C# remains the undisputed language of choice for .NET developers. VB.NET and F# are also used, but more often it’s C# and frontend languages such as JS and TS.

I’m a bit surprised by how many C# developers are (also) using macOS and Linux. For Linux, it’d be interesting to further break this down by regular Linux (virtual) machines versus WSL.

As a former SDET, I find the percentage of C# developers who don’t write any unit tests disappointing. I had hoped that by now there’d be a consensus about the benefits of unit testing in general. It’d be interesting to find out why this is. Do the developers not believe in the benefits? Is it a matter of a lack of training or engineering culture? Is management pushing back on the short-term investments that unit testing requires?

Looking back at my 20 years in the field and comparing my personal experience with the numbers here, I have to come to the conclusion that performance analysis and improvement is often a blind spot these days, though it really shouldn’t be. In many ways we’ve come full circle. Whereas in the old days the issues were limited memory and CPU resources, today we routinely write code to run on mobile devices where battery life is an issue, as well as cloud solutions that need to scale out where inefficient use of computing resources quickly means spending thousands of dollars more each month than necessary.

I think regular profiling comes together with the idea of compound interest. As you know, like retirement, you put a small amount of money over time consistently, which eventually leads up to the point where you have something significant. The same thing with profiling: even a tiny segment of time to look at performance translates into big improvements across the board, if you do it consistently and persistently over time. So I don’t aim for huge, massive improvements at once. They're excellent when we get on, iteration after iteration.