C# Language Updates

May 10, 2025

Over the years the C# language has been updated many times, and each time the syntax seems to become more complex. It has adapted features from newer languages, and it has multiple ways to use a switch statement, access elements in Lists, define methods, and more.

I can see why the language is updated by Microsoft—it would become obsolete otherwise. Developers would want to use more modern languages (like Rust) that have the newer features. But the problem with a language that is updated so many times is that it ends up being unrecognizable.

On each release, C# gains new features but these features were not part of its initial design:

C# has contextual keywords that only act as keywords in some places, to not break older programs.

It has a traditional switch statement, but also a switch expression that returns values (and has different syntax).

It allows us to create and initialize a List in many ways—basically any syntax is supported.

In my experience, most developers do not use many of the new features. Despite this, C# ends up becoming more complicated and difficult to use. If you have to learn so much new language syntax, why not just learn a language that was designed with modern features from the start? The language from .NET 4 makes more sense than what it has turned into in 2025.

Dot Net Perls is a collection of pages with code examples, which are updated to stay current. Programming is an art, and it can be learned from examples.

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Sam Allen is passionate about computer languages, and he maintains 100% of the material available on this website. He hopes it makes the world a nicer place.

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