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by jillesvangurp 2865 days ago
C# emerged around the time that Java IDEs emerged. Basically, MS did a decent job with the C# language and tooling. However, it was very much inspired by Java, Java IDEs and Microsoft's own Java IDE (Visual J++).

I think IBM was first with supporting refactorings for Java in Visual Age and Eclipse. Refactorings themselves emerged out of the Smalltalk community.

MS was very motivated to support that for C# as they were getting worried about losing marketshare to Java at the time and because J++ got a lot of negative press (compatibiltiy issues, vendor lockin, the usual MS stuff). In the end C# was held back by the same factors that held back J++ and it took them until very recently to openly support it on platforms other than Windows.
1 comments
seanmcdirmid 2865 days ago
Why C# exists isn’t very relevant to that, Microsoft actually made the IDE team a first class member st the table during C#’s design and evolution. Such and such feature thought to be difficult to tool even if it can compile? Well, fix it or cut it.

Microsoft intellisense (aka code completion) was truly a first back in 1997 (then just for VB and C++).

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jillesvangurp 2863 days ago
I think they were very much inspired by Delphi and other Borland products at the time. Delphi was pretty awesome in 1996/1997.
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dragonwriter 2863 days ago
> I think they were very much inspired by Delphi and other Borland products at the time.

Inspired by is an understatement, the connection is more intimate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

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