# NuGet

14 Hacker News commenters recommended NuGet and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend NuGet for being easier to use than alternatives like Maven and for its built-in .NET support. Critics cite a confusing build setup and mistaken package removals.

## Why people recommend it

- Easier to use than alternatives (4 comments): "Nuget/.NET ecosystem just handles it so much better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359747)) "NuGet is a million times easier to use than Maven." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45906598)) "nuget are actually a lot easier to deal with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728807))
- Standard built-in .NET package support (2 comments): "almost the entire DotNet community uses the NuGet package manager support built into the dotnet SDK binary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653461)) "Has a decent build and dependency system (NuGet, dotnet run/build, declarative builds in XML)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693475))
- Reliable Microsoft funding (2 comments): "The exceptions to this rule are package-managers with robust financial backing, such as NuGet, which gets reliable funding from Microsoft" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48156164)) "NuGet was pretty generous during the years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909149))

## What people warn about

- Clunky build and project setup (3 comments): "The build and dependency systems are an abysmal esoteric, poorly documented mix between csproj files, sln files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711286)) "the only thing that sucks about .NET is their package manager or the entire build process" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161434)) "Oops I need to tweak this weird xml file with lots of options." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066816))
- Mistaken package removals in cleanup (3 comments): "They removed 700 or so packages from NuGet proactively but those turned out to be false positives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216176)) "removed 700 or so packages from NuGet proactively but those turned out to be false positives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214605)) "Microsoft removed 300 NuGet packages by mistake as they were trying to automate defenses" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45782221))
- Often frustrating to use (2 comments): "Nuget is complete and utter garbage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903218)) "Had some headaches with nuget" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056613))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Nix](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nix.md): 378 recommend
- [Homebrew](https://hackerapproved.com/p/homebrew.md): 271 recommend
- [npm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/npm.md): 161 recommend
- [pnpm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pnpm.md): 124 recommend
- [Cargo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cargo.md): 123 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "NuGet", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nuget/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).