.Net has been around for 18 years now and we are excited to celebrate the anniversary of its first release with our .Net master Nikolay Zhelyazkov from the fresh-range team at Questers. We talked with him about his experience with the framework and how he thinks it has evolved over the years.
When did you start using the .NET framework?
More than 9 years ago. The one who is most responsible for that is Svetlin Nakov. I will never forget the hard work and support from Nikolay Kostov, Doncho Minkov and George Georgiev - key figures in the IT scene in Bulgaria. Thank you, guys! You change lives and make Bulgaria a better place!
What was the first thing you built in .NET?
Thousands of exercises in the beginning, no other way around! The first valuable thing was an end-to-end three-tier application with MVC. I remember I was so happy and confident then, having the feeling that nothing can destroy me in no way! I know that developers know what I mean...being temporary immortal.
What are you currently working on?
A dinosaur with multiple ASP.NET technologies, a fair amount of JavaScript, a huge amount of stored procedures and not only. Combining modern technologies and concepts as well as plenty of legacy code. Hard one! Here is the face of the main store - www.fresh-range.com. The real value stays in the "back-end" as the operational team usually call it, but mean the way the data is processed in the backstage. This is a really complex project, with huge value and brilliant long-term goal. We aim to build a sustainable platform which ensures food security for generations to come. And we are pretty much there actually. I am proud of my project and my team.
In your opinion how has .NET evolved over the years?
Simply said it's adapting to the dynamic environment - open source, cross-platform, allowing building different types of apps. A lot of new features appear, like writing C# in the browser and developing hybrid applications. I also heard about .Net 5, coming after .Net Core 3.0. "No more core in the title" they say, so it is constantly developing.
I think that .NET hasn't reached its potential yet and I believe that the best is yet to come!
What are the main advantages of .NET?
C# is object-oriented, and it is easy to learn, write and maintain. Of course, not perfectly easy, there are many things to take care of. And yes, memory leaks exist in .NET. Be careful, I've been there and it is not nice!
Other good things are the proper documentation and the huge community - it is relatively easy to find the proper solution to a common problem quickly.
Also, .NET suits perfect with Azure services, which makes things much easier and faster - easy to set up, deploy, monitor and scale. I love Azure DevOps. It is very nice and clean, providing everything needed to build and run proper CI. From what I’ve observed in my current project, Azure has some issues, but that’s part of another conversation and - oh well, who doesn’t? As my boss once said to me “Every software is like cheese, with all those holes inside”. And of course, we can spend a lot of time arguing about this statement, but not now, not at the .NET's birthday!
Happy 18th B-Day .NET! Thank you for being around and helping dreams come true.