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by wing-_-nuts 320 days ago
C# as popular and commonly used as java? Hmm either I'm woefully behind the times, most java devs aren't answering SO surveys, or the data is wrong. Then again the fact that C# is used in indie game dev probably gives it a serious boost in the 'evangelical user' category. It is a nice language, I just find java to be far more used in industry.

Also, the editors? I'm sorry I've simply never gotten vsCode when jetbrains and neovim exist, much less N++.

Regardless I think I have to acknowledge that maybe I'm not your average dev. TBH your average dev is probably very happy coding up react widgets in vsCode, and I'm the grouchy greybeard behind the times.

10 comments

Probably not as popular, but C# is absolutely up there, even though it doesn't get a lot of mindshare. I work for a small firm that does consulting for enterprise customers and I see a lot of C# around.

Europe especially is basically MS's backyard.

In Australia, C# feels more popular than Java. I used to take on freelance projects in both and had far more work in C#.

I agree it'll pop up more with "evangelical users" though, 100%.

I've often thought that when you see Mac and Linux more strongly represented than you'd expect, I do wonder when people dual boot Windows 95% and Linux 5%, are they ticking the box for Linux? Does the VB.net hostage even bother to fill in the survey?

Agree on VS Code, it's OK if you can't find support elsewhere, but the JetBrains stuff is just in a different class.

My beard is only partially grey, but I agree with you.

On C# this could be your country/sample. As far as I remember, though this is from almost a decade ago now, C# is more popular than Java in the UK and Australia but Java comes out ahead in the US.
Recall that this is a StackOverlow survey, and reflects their history and audience. [0] Even still, I'm also surprised.

[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/01/language-wars/

I believe Java is more popular for enterprise and web apps.

.NET is widely used for videogames (games made with Unity, Godot, Unigine engines, also internal tools and game servers), desktop software, embedded software. Java is rarely used for these things, hence the results of that survey.

I think you're grossly overlooking swathes of relatively small, non-tech companies that just treat Microsoft as the default for everything. Need a programming language? C#'s there. Need a coding text editor? VSCode.
Vscode is free, which is a huge positive for it. For lots of places it can be hard to get budget for dev tools. A lot of it can depend on your industry or region
Stack overflow is built using C# and I remember there being a large Microsoft stack developer community on SO back when I used it. That might skew the results
In Norway, C# seems to have surpassed Java in the finance sector several years ago. C# is also much bigger than Java in game development.
You seem so confident, do you have insights into the entire industry?
>Regardless I think I have to acknowledge that maybe I'm not your average dev. TBH your average dev is probably very happy coding up react widgets in vsCode, and I'm the grouchy greybeard behind the times.

You should work on your reading comprehension