# .NET 293 Hacker News commenters recommended .NET and 148 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (28 owners). **Verdict:** A mature, cross-platform platform with a large standard library, strong performance and few third-party dependencies; critics cite painful Framework-to-Core migrations and constant churn in practices. ## Why people recommend it - Rich batteries-included standard library (5 comments): "Massive standard library, with a consistent and wide focus on correctness, ergonomics, and performance across the board." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693475)) "The standard libraries of these two zoo's of programming languages vastly eclipse what the discussed languages offer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49388019)) ".NET is very "batteries included" as well so you don't need a huge base-line of competing open source packages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904049)) - Strong, tunable performance (4 comments): "Modern .NET isn't even difficult to avoid allocations, with the Span API and the work they've done to minimize unnecessary copies/allocs within the std lib." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003262)) ".NET code, especially when tuned, still has significantly more knobs in your code to tune and make faster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45910273)) "a set of changes in JIT that allows almost completely eliminate the abstraction cost in certain scenarios" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693669)) - Cross-platform, runs on Linux (4 comments): ".Net works on Linux and Microsoft is as friendly towards open source and open standards as a Big Tech company can be." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717394)) "cross-platform support, performance gains and newer C# versions are worth more than the stability of .NET Framework" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479846)) "if you truly want a write-once, work everywhere platform without any kind of a required runtime, there is DotNet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782658)) - Few third-party dependencies needed (3 comments): "2020 State of the Octoverse security report showed that .NET ecosystem has on average the lowest number of transitive dependencies." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033166)) "The amount of third-party (non-testing related) dependencies needed for most .NET applications is very manageable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774184)) ".NET is very "batteries included" as well so you don't need a huge base-line of competing open source packages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904049)) ## What people warn about - Framework to Core migration pain (3 comments): "Upgrading a modern .NET (Core) version often means changing just versions in the project file." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892144)) "the kind of customers that were affected by the breaking changes, between Framework and Core, decided to keep the old stuff running" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480215)) "the .net framework fossilised in term of functionality" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46055455)) - Constant churn in practices, versioning (3 comments): "The .Net that started as Enterprise Server Stuff is now kinda sorta 'Whatever' about versioning, stability, roadmaps, and platform planning." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47993736)) "constantly changing "best practices" from MS so the thing you wrote last year doesn't look anything structurally like what you're doing now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898990)) "I am 100% in agreement that .NET dev team is doing an amazing job, but it's precisely because of their continued shakeups" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46053587)) - Large codebases and boilerplate (2 comments): "C# is one of those languages where you don't mean to, but you can't help just creating tons of files/boilerplate/etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45925850)) "I love the new features of .Net, but in my experience a lot of software written in .Net has very large code bases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46056553)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [BEAM (Erlang VM)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/beam.md): 80 recommend - [Java Virtual Machine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/java-virtual-machine.md): 42 recommend - [JVM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jvm.md): 39 recommend - [GraalVM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/graalvm.md): 33 recommend - [libgodc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libgodc.md): 13 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, ".NET", https://hackerapproved.com/p/net/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).