> Like if you build an Excel formula, the mandatory async/await approach just doesn't work. It's not an asynchronous operation and runs into a UI context where you deadlock if you wait.
Last time I did excel interop it was COM based and there wasn't any async part of it. I'm curious if you were using COM interop also? Also, async/await was explicitly designed to work in UI contexts like Winforms and WPF where there is only a single UI thread...?
> It took like 15 years before they added a json serializer to the standard library..
That isn't really true. DataContractJsonSerializer [0] landed in .NET 3.5 which was in 2007. Admittedly, it kinda sucked but it was there and was usable. And also JSON.Net was around by that point and was/is excellent.
> ...and don't even think about support for any new major image format (webp, heic).
Image support on windows was historically provided by WIC [1] and does support the formats you talked about. But you are correct that native .NET support for many image formats is non-existent.
> And because they broke backward compatibility on so many libraries, it's a non trivial effort to convert a complex code base to core.
This is very true, and I felt it firsthand. My employer still has a codebase on .NET Framework (compiled against 4.5.2 but deployed against 4.8). It is WCF based and the jump to Core was a massive break. But in the end, I think the break was a good decision. There were just too many design mistakes, bad assumptions and underlying system changes to keep compat across the big leap to a modern multi-platform framework. .NET today is faster, more flexible and has more capabilities than .NET Framework ever did. Even if it did take a long time to get here.
And besides, even if new features are not coming to .NET Framework anymore, Microsoft has support .NET 3.5.1 until 2029! [2] Isn't 22 years of support enough? (.NET 4.8's EOL hasn't even been announced yet!)
For writing excel formulas, while I think you can use VSTO/COM, you will get a poor performance if you do. The "right" way to do it is with ExcelDNA/ManagedXLL. But the excel calculation engine was never designed to support async/await, and your calculations operate within a UI thread. So if you need to make a network call in one of your excel functions, you quickly run out of options.
Last time I did excel interop it was COM based and there wasn't any async part of it. I'm curious if you were using COM interop also? Also, async/await was explicitly designed to work in UI contexts like Winforms and WPF where there is only a single UI thread...?
> It took like 15 years before they added a json serializer to the standard library..
That isn't really true. DataContractJsonSerializer [0] landed in .NET 3.5 which was in 2007. Admittedly, it kinda sucked but it was there and was usable. And also JSON.Net was around by that point and was/is excellent.
> ...and don't even think about support for any new major image format (webp, heic).
Image support on windows was historically provided by WIC [1] and does support the formats you talked about. But you are correct that native .NET support for many image formats is non-existent.
> And because they broke backward compatibility on so many libraries, it's a non trivial effort to convert a complex code base to core.
This is very true, and I felt it firsthand. My employer still has a codebase on .NET Framework (compiled against 4.5.2 but deployed against 4.8). It is WCF based and the jump to Core was a massive break. But in the end, I think the break was a good decision. There were just too many design mistakes, bad assumptions and underlying system changes to keep compat across the big leap to a modern multi-platform framework. .NET today is faster, more flexible and has more capabilities than .NET Framework ever did. Even if it did take a long time to get here.
And besides, even if new features are not coming to .NET Framework anymore, Microsoft has support .NET 3.5.1 until 2029! [2] Isn't 22 years of support enough? (.NET 4.8's EOL hasn't even been announced yet!)
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.runtime.... [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wic/native-w... [2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/microso...