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by finaard 849 days ago
I had a customer request a project that required C# due to a few fancy dependencies they had purchased back in 2008 - which was my first proper contact with .NET. I got frustrated with the Visual Studio UI after a few hours, and switched to editing in Emacs and compiling via CLI tools, only using Visual Studio for editing the project data. It wasn't too complicated to kick cc-mode into behaving somewhat sensibly with C# code.
2 comments
masfoobar 848 days ago
It was not just about C# editing. There were other things being used in Visual Studio at that time. Also being inexperienced in VB.NET (my first job) surrounded by 10 other seasoned devs, they discouraged anything outside of Visual Studio. I understand why when looking back.

This was also the Visual SourceSafe days. How I do not miss that!

C# wiggled its way in eventually.

Back in 2008, I was pretty much using Emacs for most programming languages. The only exception was C# and Javascript.

As the years pass to now, I rarely use a programming language outside of emacs. I have enough years in my career to not tell me what I can and cannot do to get things done.

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finaard 847 days ago
I had my emacs setup to edit LotusScript (one of the scripting options for Lotus Notes), which is close enough to VB that it could handle the occasional file - this was a new codebase, though, so it made sense to just start with C#.

That was also the project where I tested if git reached the point where you can have "normal" people work with it as well (which worked pretty well). I never accepted any project where they'd have me work with idiotic proprietary source control, unless the project was "migrate away from that".

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masfoobar 844 days ago
I was happy when I changed job, using SVN (Subversion) instead on Visual Sourcesafe. Then I dabbled a bit with TFS (Team Foundation Server)

Since around 2014 -- It has been Git all the way.

Well, until recently. Codebase at my current job is all contained in a single Subversion repo. It is difficult to maintain and branching takes GBs!

One of my first goals is to move over to Git, and into smaller Git repos. Of course, I have Magit to get it done. :-)

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masfoobar 848 days ago
... also (continued)

I like how people think I am purposely being different or difficult because I do C# development in emacs. Many have never heard of it. If they have its from forums or youtube videos.

Think of their mindset -- Its not like I have moved away from Visual Studio to Visual Studio Code. I am using Emacs. They must think I am trying to be difficult or special.

I have also swapped my L-CTRL key with CAPS specially for improving my emacs experience.

Regardless, when we do pair programming (or something) on my screen and they watch me use Emacs on a C# project, they soon understand. :-)

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