alt Hacker News.NET is actually, unironically good. But yes, this is one of few exceptions, unfortunately.
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I have mixed feelings about .Net.
I think C# and .Net are objectively better to use than Java or C++.
But the tooling and documentation is kind of a mess. Do you build with the "dotnet" command, or the "msbuild" command? When should you prefer "nuget restore" over "dotnet restore"? Should you put "<RestorePackagesConfig>true</RestorePackagesConfig>" in the .csproj instead? What's the difference between a reference and using Nuget to install a package? What's the difference between "Framework" and "Core"? Why, in 2026, do I still need to tell it not to prefer 32-bit binaries?
It's getting better, but there's still 20 years of documentation, how-to articles, StackOverflow Q&A, blogs, and books telling you to do old, broken, and out of date stuff, and finding good information about the specific version you're using can be difficult.
Admittedly, my perspective is skewed because I had never used C# and .Net before jumping in to a large .Net Framework project with hundreds of sub-projects developed over 15-20 years.
But .Net goes back way farther than 15 years.
I attended one of the evangelist roadshows Microsoft put on when they announced .Net, back in the late '90s. We were developing Windows applications and using an SQL Server/ASP back-end.
We walked out of there saying WTF WAS all that? It was terribly communicated. The departing attendees were shaking their heads in bafflement.
I'm impressed that it has stood the test of time and seems to be well-done; I've never had occasion to use it.
But man... that stupid name.