Is .NET the right choice for modern app development?

[zarajohnson]

.NET has evolved into a powerful framework for building secure, scalable, and high-performance applications. For SMBs especially, it offers a productive environment with cross-platform support, robust libraries, and seamless integration with cloud services like Azure.

If you’ve worked with .NET for web apps, APIs, or enterprise tools—what real-world advantages have you seen? Have you faced any limitations when compared to other stacks like Node.js or Python?

Also curious—has anyone used .NET MAUI or Blazor in production for internal business tools?

Looking forward to hearing experiences around:

Maintainability & performance of .NET apps

Migration from legacy systems using .NET

Development speed and team productivity

Hosting .NET on Linux/Docker/Azure

Thanks in advance!

[mr_meeseeks]

.net is not a right choice. it hasn't been for over a decade.
if you want to build a mobile app, consider xcode(for ios)/Android Studio for android/python for small websites.

if you want to build a forum site which usually answers most dev needs, consider xenforo.

asp.net is for enterprise solutions that require massive computing power and storage.

the whole .net ecosystem (visual studio) is more of a sandbox for highschoolers learning OOP and hello-worlds.

[Adin_1]

Literally nothing is better than C# and .NET (ok slightly exaggerated) but:

• garbage collection (sorry C), try-catch (sorry C), safe (sorry...C), properties, did i mention amazing visual ide beating qt?
• LINQ. Let me repeat it again: LINQ!
• the timer tick event is very useful and weird but powerful (not something too intuitive in Python).
• Unity which is the most popular game engine even exceeding Unreal and it's not just c# friendly but also partially written in c#, in addition to having CoD mobile and Pokeman Go in c# + you can always export any game for mobile even if you're completely java-handicapped.
• Godot, the indie game engine from Argentina is also officially supporting c++ and c# + its own script (like python)
• C# is a total monster when it comes to computer vision (sorry c++, it's not like you never tried!). Opencv has fully functioning wrapper for net and "just by the way" you have aforge and accord.net - 2 (well one build over the other) libs that arguably beat opencv for many things. This is important because in the upcoming robotic revolution computer vision may gain traction again and python/rust and llm to trail behind, we'll see.
• While no one unironically makes windows forms apps these days, the IDE is so perfect you can create a very nice windows interface on your laptop for...anything - faster than c++ and QT. PoS, antivirus, image editting, computer vision: visual studio is the fastest choice + community is free and has all you need: like nuget and some obfuscator if you plan to sell the app/distribute as closed source.
• It works ok with mysql, postgressl, obviously sql server...
• The Microsoft.ML namespace is ok-ish + the regex is very powerful but I agree Python's ecosystem beats it and puts .net in the pocket in the LLM era, likely the only case where .NET is behind.
• If you want a functioning programming "feel" and save LOC there is: F#. Yes I know f# is "so 2015" but the point stands: it's functional and uses the .NET library which wasn't small even in 2015.
• Easy interop with c++ as dlls.

To summarize: C# may even be the top choice for games or has huge potential for robotics where say visual studio made windows app utilizes computer vision and it gets exported to Arduino just to move the motors (nothing more). It's also very good cURL substitute for simple web manipulation or database manipulation.

Where it lacks, far from optimal: speed ( C is amazing for both execution of operation, compilation and in the "vibe coding" era hell even for development since you don't have to worry about conversions of datatypes and leaking memory...), websites: well I think kids these days use typescript or whatever + php/mysql/cgi c++ while "dead" was always better than asp.net kind of.
LLM, the NLP era: way behind Python and even rust it seems. Few ports and help online for chatbots in C#. Python ate the whole LLM thing.
math: datatypes have huge limitations while python handles by default very large numbers, it's also easier to write formulas in python as you'd have to convert often in C#. There are good .net libs for math and finance though which is why so called "quants" used to like it.

In addition many great software is in it; Vegas by sony ( top 5 video editting app), pokeman go and cod mobile as mentioned, keepass (i think??), it's weird most crypto desktop wallets seem to like c++ qt, the linux kids could've made them much faster in c#.

just my $0.02 on top of my head! I'm currently focused on C (and Python) but hope to encounter C# challenges again.

[Minimalist]

These questions about this programming language or that programming language will be in the future obsolete because of AI. I just played around with ChatGPT and it is fun. So what did I do? I created a Template, and one has to be as exact as possible, fed into the AI and out came a completed usable App that can be used. No thinking a step further AI will develop it's own language behind the scenes and use it. The funny thing, I use vb.net community edition, AI didn't ask which edition but straight away created the app. So what app? It was just a simple alarm clock for the desktop, and the app works. So, at 78 years of age I am absolutely happy to have look into the future of programming.