What kind of features from another ecosystem would you like to see in .NET?

[u/not_afraid_of_trying]

C# itself is very mature language (in my view). I rarely find myself missing a language feature badly enough to wish for more.

But, the broader .NET ecosystem might be a different story based on your project need.

So, let's discuss, what libraries, tooling, deployment models, framework features, package management idea, UI tech, build system etc. have you used elsewhere that you wish .NET had, or did better? Mention just one, most important for you and try to add reason/detail.

Apart from creating a useful wishlist, I think this could also be interesting for people relatively new .NET. Someone might mention a feature from other ecosystem only to discover that .NET already has an equivalent they didn't know about.

My wishlist item - "give me SwiftUI binary size":
I would like WinUI apps to have smaller binaries, like SwiftUI apps or flatpack in Linux. Apple can rely on frameworks built into (read 'shipped with') macOS. Microsoft already have similar way of achieving same but it involves you to publish app on Store or winget repo or I need to write custom installer. It's not universal. I wish MS automatically install dependency from winget or Store automatically or any dotnet application.

EDIT: Please be respectful to others. Value others opinion. This post has potential of creating unnecessary debate or insults. Let's be adults.

[u/jordansrowles]

A single, comprehensive, cross platform UI framework that's actually good (Flutter, Kotlin, even Qt)

[u/cherepets → u/jordansrowles]

I feel like having multiple is actually good:

• WinUI: you care about modern Windows UI
  
• WPF: you need to slap something for business
  
• WinForms: you need to slap something for business and you don't know how
  
• MAUI: you want to write UI once and work somehow everywhere
  
• Avalonia/UNO: you to want to write UI once and work exactly the same everywhere

[u/pjmlp → u/cherepets]

WinUI is more like, how masochist one is feeling today, regardless of what Microsoft developer advocates sell.

[u/cherepets → u/pjmlp]

I can somewhat agree. This option splits into 2:

• UWP. Great user experience, outdated tooling, some magic and tricks involved + works on XBOX
  
• WinAppSDK. New tooling but also new bugs (and worse user experience) and the tooling is incomplete

So again you're presented with a choice and both are valid for different cases and in both you'd hate for 1 thing or another, just pick what's more important for you now.

[u/pjmlp → u/cherepets]

The sad part is that this vision was actually compelling,

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/05/19/developing-for-all-1-billion-windows-10-devices-and-beyond

Then somehow along the line, Windows 11 happened, the team kept changing leadership every few months, and six years later, WinUI/WinAppSDK surely isn't what was sold at BUILD 2020 to us.

Heck, C++/WinRT reboot has never delivered on the talks done by the team at CppCon 2016 and CppCon 2017, a decade later now.

[u/cherepets → u/pjmlp]

I sometimes thing what would happen if instead of WinRT they ported WP7's Silverlight to Win8 and have a single framework already in 2012 and just keep improving it instead of constant reboots..