C# is one of the best languages we evaluated for LLM problem solving. In fact, many strongly typed, lower level languages perform well in our testing (this isn't to say that the solutions are more maintainable, but the LLMs come up with better ideas when writing C# or Rust than Python). Google models especially, for whatever reason, outperform in C#, not Golang.
What you can do in C# today is convert any unsafe pointer to Span whenever you get your hands on it, and pass around slices. You can still drop down to ‘fixed’ when it turns out you need it for performance.
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
Most likely a side effect related to Windows team finally giving some C# love, instead of COM and C++, given the comparisons between C# 16 with Rust and Swift in a few article sections.
moomin 5 hours ago [-]
The Windows team is talking to DevDiv again? Satan's putting on his ice skates right now.
pjmlp 4 hours ago [-]
One can only hope.
C++/WinRT is in maintenance, and you will notice the WinUI 3.0 does most of their demos, and gallery with C#.
moomin 1 hours ago [-]
It would be nice if any display API actually covered the entire API with the exception of the actual OS API…
Dwedit 45 minutes ago [-]
Are they finally marking all those functions that use IntPtrs as unsafe? (such as Marshal.Copy)
orphea 11 minutes ago [-]
Not really, because IntPtr is just a native-sized integer.
Marshal.Copy will certainly be marked unsafe, as will anything else that touches unmanaged memory.
caspper69 2 hours ago [-]
They are aligning more closely with the Rust 2024 model for unsafety, which requires inner annotations at the point of unsafety in addition to notation of the function (unless it is the safe-unsafe boundary) plus it imposes a requirement for a SAFETY doc notation for describing the specific invariants the caller must enforce to uphold the safety guarantees. Not terribly onerous in my opinion. I maintain a few native library wrappers on nuget, so I will have to do some updates around IntPtr usage, but this doesn’t seem like it will be terribly painful in my case. Thankfully I don’t do much marshalling. Plus you get a nifty badge on nuget for making your library safe.
The blurb toward the end about Rent/return makes me a bit nervous though. They say they’re not going full borrow checker, but rent at least sounds an awful lot like borrow to me. Details were basically non-existent though.
I guess I wonder what the end game is here though. The more they make C# like Rust with a GC, the less incentive people have to use C# except maybe to support legacy work. I am still far more comfortable in C# than Rust, and I believe C# is superior for e.g. web, but over time this advantage could be lessened quite a bit as the Rust ecosystem continues to grow.
SideburnsOfDoom 3 hours ago [-]
> The unsafe keyword is being redesigned
OK, I see a lot of C# code often and over a long time.
I see the "unsafe" keyword used approximately never.
I'm sure that this is useful for some cases. But not everyday things for most of us. If we did use it, it would be carefully isolated in a library for a specific purpose.
tialaramex 3 hours ago [-]
This moves C# to a more modern systematic understanding of what this keyword is for, but it'll remain very rare in C# the same way it's rare in Rust, and presumably in Swift.
The choice of keyword "unsafe" is partly psychological. Turns out if you called this exact same feature "trusted" or whatever the programmers don't have the appropriate feelings about it. They want to write trusted code, they don't want to write unsafe code, so making them write the keyword "unsafe" provides that psychological disincentive.
pixl97 2 hours ago [-]
Initialize liveHandgrenade;
zmj 2 hours ago [-]
There are standard library APIs that let you do memory-unsafe things without the unsafe keyword (CollectionsMarshal, MemoryMarshal). They're useful, but the burden is on the caller to uphold the invariants. This proposal seems aimed at making that kind of contract more explicit and obvious.
pjmlp 3 hours ago [-]
Many of us use it in scenarios where others would write a blog post about a rewrite in Rust, C++ or whatever.
CLR was designed to support languages like C++, yet many don't learn the knobs.
Weebs 54 minutes ago [-]
Any lesser known knobs one should know? I'm considering a .NET backend for my compiler
pjmlp 41 minutes ago [-]
If on Windows, one is to see what C++/CLI would generate, with ildisam or similar tool.
You can also emit MSIL for what you actually want to do, with low-level bytecodes.
Then there is unsafe, ref structs, stack allocation, fixed buffers, scoped types, manual memory management, array pools, memory pipelines, the various span variants.
Quothling 2 hours ago [-]
Around here C# is only really used at stagnant middle sized companies with horrible code bases. The sort where the company follow Uncle Bob religiously, while completely misunderstanding everything Uncle Bob ever said. Doesn't mean the language (and it's runtime) can't be good.
caspper69 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, many people instinctively stay away from anything microsoft (except github, typescript and npm). But the stack is solid. I’m always reminded of Stack Overflow and how they built on asp.net and like 7 servers and it scaled very well for years.
Everyone has what they like and what they’re familiar with, and for better or worse, especially for startups it’s rarely .net. But I couldn’t imagine e.g. using js instead on the back end, but that’s just me.
Weebs 46 minutes ago [-]
A VM with good FFI and structs is pretty unique and all of the tooling around .NET is excellent
F# is a sleeping giant of capability in the FP/ML space, being able to use a lot of the existing tooling
People rightfully point out how it's sort of second class in comparison to C# at times, but its still A tier tooling that few languages have
Profan 2 hours ago [-]
In a game development context, especially where C++ interop is involved and a lot of code lives across a boundary where memory is owned by C++ but you want to avoid/minimize marshaling overhead or just generally maximize performance, the unsafe keyword is quite handy, but outside of those you can indeed probably get around by approximately never using it.
There's a lot of power C# gives you if carefully curated, making a lot of cases where people previously might have seen C++ as the only option as suddenly quite viable.
... See also the somewhat arcane Unsafe.As etc APIs
smt88 2 hours ago [-]
C# is like Rust in the sense that a regular (web, desktop, etc.) developer probably won’t need unsafe, but it’s useful for lower-level work in libraries and CLI tools, especially where performance is important.
Rendered at 17:41:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Data at https://gertlabs.com/rankings?provider=google
C++/WinRT is in maintenance, and you will notice the WinUI 3.0 does most of their demos, and gallery with C#.
Marshal.Copy will certainly be marked unsafe, as will anything else that touches unmanaged memory.
The blurb toward the end about Rent/return makes me a bit nervous though. They say they’re not going full borrow checker, but rent at least sounds an awful lot like borrow to me. Details were basically non-existent though.
I guess I wonder what the end game is here though. The more they make C# like Rust with a GC, the less incentive people have to use C# except maybe to support legacy work. I am still far more comfortable in C# than Rust, and I believe C# is superior for e.g. web, but over time this advantage could be lessened quite a bit as the Rust ecosystem continues to grow.
OK, I see a lot of C# code often and over a long time.
I see the "unsafe" keyword used approximately never.
I'm sure that this is useful for some cases. But not everyday things for most of us. If we did use it, it would be carefully isolated in a library for a specific purpose.
The choice of keyword "unsafe" is partly psychological. Turns out if you called this exact same feature "trusted" or whatever the programmers don't have the appropriate feelings about it. They want to write trusted code, they don't want to write unsafe code, so making them write the keyword "unsafe" provides that psychological disincentive.
CLR was designed to support languages like C++, yet many don't learn the knobs.
You can also emit MSIL for what you actually want to do, with low-level bytecodes.
Then there is unsafe, ref structs, stack allocation, fixed buffers, scoped types, manual memory management, array pools, memory pipelines, the various span variants.
Everyone has what they like and what they’re familiar with, and for better or worse, especially for startups it’s rarely .net. But I couldn’t imagine e.g. using js instead on the back end, but that’s just me.
F# is a sleeping giant of capability in the FP/ML space, being able to use a lot of the existing tooling
People rightfully point out how it's sort of second class in comparison to C# at times, but its still A tier tooling that few languages have
There's a lot of power C# gives you if carefully curated, making a lot of cases where people previously might have seen C++ as the only option as suddenly quite viable.
... See also the somewhat arcane Unsafe.As etc APIs