At work, the majority of our projects are ASP.NET web apps. Yet when I talk with folks at other startups, I often get an “oh” in response, as if choosing C# is an unusual decision. Recently, C# was named the 2023 Language of the Year by TIOBE. And it’s one of the top languages by overall usage. But why is it hard to find other new startups using it for something other than Windows development?
Hobbyists often determine which languages gain long-term cultural momentum. C# struggled early.
- It wasn’t widely taught in schools, unlike Java or Python.
- Its enterprise-heavy reputation made it feel corporate and rigid.
- Visual Studio licensing and the Windows-only development story raised the barrier to entry.
Startups adopted stacks that were cheap, flexible, and easy to deploy. Early C# didn’t fit that pattern.
- Before .NET Core, development and deployment were effectively Windows-only.
- Tooling and production licensing once created real cost friction compared to open-source ecosystems.
- For web development, C# didn’t offer anything decisively better than Java or other established server-side languages.
If anything, for web development, ASP.NET has rarely been the originator of mainstream web ideas. Instead, it often adopted patterns after they became popular elsewhere.
- Classic ASP.NET Web Forms mirrored the JSP model of server controls and page life-cycles.
- ASP.NET MVC arrived years after Rails defined the modern MVC-on-the-web renaissance.
- ASP.NET Minimal APIs closely resemble the lightweight, handler-driven style popularized by Express.js and similar micro-frameworks.
I think the main challenge is perception. Many developers still associate C# with the Windows-only enterprise setting that defined its early years. The situation is markedly different today. .NET Core made C# fully cross-platform. Modern tooling like VS Code reduced the entry cost. The ecosystem has embraced open source in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
By raw usage numbers, C# is an extremely popular language. But the audience is just not visible. You won’t see them at meetups or on the first page of Hacker News. And for software startups who start writing code today, I don’t see it as a popular language choice despite it’s speed, feature-set, and ecosystem.