WOW! .NET it’s celebrating 20 years and that’s something!A bit of context so I’m not misinterpreted with what I’ll say next: I’ve been developing with .NET since 2005. Started with desktop applications, embraced embedded systems when .NETMF showed up, worked on several Azure technologies, Visual Studio extensibility, msbuild and other endeavors. Since 2016 I’ve been working relentlessly in .NET nanoFramework. I 💜 .NET and I use it for anything and everything that I can!The landing page for the celebration of 20 years of .NET it’s pretty neat and gives a perfect snapshot
of .NET history and also – if you can read between the lines – the general overview on how the .NET ecosystem is pictured by the “top levels”.
.NET it’s the ONLY ecosystem that allows coding from the most complex multi-node, distributed
cloud application down to blinking an LED on the tiniest micro-controller. Using exactly the same tools, the same language, the same technology and the same awesome experience from coding to debugging.
This is a fact that Scott Hanselman highlighted and completely demonstrated during the last .NET Conf in the session “.NET Everywhere – Windows, Linux, and Beyond”. So expressive and clear that just makes me want to repeat the above: .NET it’s the ONLY ecosystem where this is possible. (if you can prove me wrong, I’ll be happy to learn about it 🙂 )
Yet, the “small end” part keeps been treated as the stepchild of the .NET ecosystem…
For the life of me, I can not understand why!
On the landing page of the 20 years of .NET two pivotal moments are clearly missing :
And at the top right corner, that the sentence over there, should be something like this:
“Supported on Windows, Linux, macOS and microcontrollers.”
Yes, .NET can (also) run on Raspberry PIs and on tiny micro-controllers with just a few kilobytes of RAM and flash! And that should be shout out for everyone to know about it.
Until this is “fixed” and the “small end” of the .NET ecosystem is truly embraced and presented side by side, as an equal, just like the other tools and technologies there, we’ll keep failing on attracting even more developers, more students learning to code and more companies developing their products.
They’ll inevitably default to other technologies, by the simple fact that they don’t even know that this exists, that it is possible, ridiculously simple and that it can give them an immense productivity, efficiency, and joy. Or, to put it on other words, someone could be doing more on empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. 😉
Because those persons could and they would, if only they just knew…
José Simões 