[terandle]

Been using .net since 2.0 and nah C# has jumped the shark. Primary constructors are a very poorly designed feature that for some reason was added in the last version.

The new-ish yearly release cycle I think is mostly to blame, they feel like they need to add some headline features every year but the team also, maybe due to org-chart politics, seems to not really able to make deep runtime level changes that are needed to actually add anything useful so they just add syntax sugar every year bloating the language.

[kevingadd]

The emphasis on syntax sugar has a very useful side effect, which is that new language features can be used on old runtimes. To this day some of the newer C# features are usable when targeting the ancient .NET Framework 4.x, like 'ref returns'. This would not be possible if every new language feature was paired with runtime-level changes. (Many new language features do come with changes to the runtime and BCL). I support a bunch of people who use NET4x to this day and I'm able to write modern C# for that target thanks to the language and compiler being designed this way.

A lot of stuff is also designed to be independent of library changes - IIRC for example if you use nullability, the compiler will emit the Nullable attribute's definition into your .dll as a hidden class, so that your library will work even on older versions of the runtime with older base class libraries. Doing this complicates the compiler (and adds a tiny, tiny amount of bloat to your dll) but means that more people can adopt a new feature without having to think about upgrading their SDK or runtime.

My personal opinion is that if a change can be done adequately entirely at the compiler level without runtime/library changes, it should be done there. It allows the people working on the language, libraries and runtime to iterate independently and fix problems without having to coordinate across 3 teams.

[wvenable]

> Primary constructors are a very poorly designed feature that for some reason was added in the last version.

I upgraded to .NET 8 recently and I love primary constructors. I don't use them everywhere but they are great for dependency injection or for small classes.

[terandle]

Beware the footguns!

https://mareks-082.medium.com/dark-side-of-the-primary-const...

Let's just say they could have done a much better job on it. It feels rushed and haphazard for such a mature language.

[wvenable]

It doesn't seem that bad -- the lack of readonly would be my only concern out of that article and one I didn't actually consider.

I think, as a feature, this is sort of the MVP. They could have done a better job of it by adding more to it (e.g. maybe allow the readonly modifier on the constructor properties). It's hard to imagine them being able to take anything away from primary constructors that would make it better.