Today, I’m going to share ten reasons why you should learn C# in 2022.
Welcome back, and if you’re new to the channel, I’m a software engineer with more than 15 years of experience with the .NET platform. This channel is all about .NET development.
Now let’s get into why learning C# makes a lot of sense in 2022. Make sure to stick to the end where I provide a bonus reason.
Reason 1: Easy to Get Started
C# has been around for 20 years and is still actively developed. With C# 10 released in November 2021, we got new features that make it even simpler to get started with C#.
The language itself is statically typed, which means that the compiler checks, types, and provides errors before you run the application.
There are many good videos, tutorials, and courses about getting started with C#.
Reason 2: The .NET Platform
The .NET platform offers countless opportunities to use C# to create applications. You can build web, desktop, and mobile applications with C#.
You can even create an application for the Xbox, and if you deploy an application using the Microsoft store, you gain access to millions of users around the world.
You can also build apps for IoT devices, smartwatches, 3D games, and much more.
The .NET platform is enormous, and there are countless opportunities to build with C#.
Reason 3: .NET is Cross-Platform
You can develop C# on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The applications you build for the .NET platform also run on all those platforms, including Android and iOS, using Xamarin or .NET MAUI.
Using C# as your programming language, you are not limited to specific operating systems or devices.
Reason 4: Great Tooling
When it comes to development, one of the most important things is tooling.
There is Visual Studio, a fully integrated IDE and, in my opinion, the best developer tool available for .NET development. The debugging and F5 experiences are fantastic. With .NET Hot Reload integrated into Visual Studio, you can quickly apply changes to your code while the application is running.
If you don’t want to use a big IDE like Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code offers a more lightweight solution to build .NET applications.
If you don’t like either option, other products like JetBrains Rider are available too. I’m sure you’ll find the proper tooling for you.
Reason 5: Performance
The general performance of .NET applications is excellent. I don’t want to go into much detail here other than telling you that generally speaking, .NET applications run very quickly in most scenarios.
The .NET team has iterated over the language and the .NET platform for years, and they have improved the performance with every iteration.
If performance is critical for your scenario, test it yourself or look at detailed benchmarks online.
Reason 6: Programming Paradigms
As a statically typed programming language, the compiler helps your detect errors before you run the application. For beginners, having a good compiler can be helpful and avoid frustration getting a program to run.
With bigger software projects, typing helps you when refactoring your code, and it allows new developers to understand the code base more quickly.
C# is an object-oriented language that supports everything you expect from an object-oriented language. You can use classes, interfaces, inheritance, polymorphism, and everything else.
C# also supports a limited set of functional-oriented techniques. However, if you want to dive into functional programming, I suggest checking out F#, another language for the .NET platform.
Reason 7: The Community
There are millions of C# and .NET developers around the world. If you run into any issues with the framework or the platform, you almost always find help on StackOverflow, on GitHub, in YouTube videos, or in blog posts.
Having a community of like-minded people motivates you to continue your developer journey, and you are not alone if you hit a roadblock.
I would always recommend joining a community whenever you want to learn something. It will stop you from quitting when hitting the first resistance.
Reason 8: Helpful Documentation
The official documentation around C# and .NET has massively improved over the last few years. I can genuinely recommend using the official documentation as a starting point when learning C# or looking up the behavior of a specific keyword or API.
There is nothing worse than learning something new, and there is no documentation. Luckily, that’s not the case when you get into the .NET world.
Reason 9: .NET is Open Source
The .NET platform and the C# compiler are open-source. You can look at the specific implementation of an API or the compiler’s inner workings.
You can even suggest changes to the language specification or provide feedback to API proposals in their respective GitHub repositories.
Reason 10: Many Learning Resources
There are countless free and paid resources to learn C#. There is a lot of beginner content and advanced courses about specific parts of the .NET world like EntityFramework or Xamarin Forms.
For example, you’ll find a FREE Blazor web development course on my YouTube channel.
Because there are so many developers using the .NET platform, there will always be people explaining new features and talking about best practices to accomplish specific tasks and solve common problems.
Bonus: You Can Earn a Living from C# Development
I have had multiple jobs in my career that allowed me to earn a full-time income from C# application development. C# has been around for a long time and will be there in the future.
If finding a job is your priority, I think it’s a great idea to learn a popular programming language. Maybe you don’t like Java or JavaScript and don’t want to learn the latest and hottest languages like Go or Dart, C# is a great alternative.
