referencesource VS csharplang

Compare referencesource vs csharplang and see what are their differences.

referencesource

Source from the Microsoft .NET Reference Source that represent a subset of the .NET Framework (by microsoft)

csharplang

The official repo for the design of the C# programming language (by dotnet)
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referencesource csharplang
88 262
3,103 10,868
0.7% 1.3%
0.0 9.6
22 days ago 2 days ago
C# C#
MIT License -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

referencesource

Posts with mentions or reviews of referencesource. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-30.
  • Got my first c# software engineering job, any advice?
    1 project | /r/dotnet | 14 Jun 2023
    But to go deeper to .NET/CLR architecture is important too. Try to understand how it works inside. Use the source, Luke! https://source.dot.net/ https://referencesource.microsoft.com/ This source code vaults is not completed then try JetBrains dotPeek tool to look at any assembly source code.
  • The most obscure type in the System namespace
    1 project | /r/dotnet | 11 Jun 2023
    (https://github.com/Microsoft/referencesource/blob/master/System.ServiceModel/System/ServiceModel/MessageSecurityVersion.cs; scroll down to inner classes)
  • Why your F# evangelism isn't working
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 May 2023
    List is an IList/IReadOnlyList; these interfaces do nothing that couldn't be done right inside the file itself.

    https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/colle...

    https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/colle...

    Instead we have to go diving through the IList, which implements ICollection, which implements IEnumerable, which implements IEnumerable (again). Just because each interface is composed of another interface, doesn't mean you aren't using inheritance. You are effectively creating a custom inheritance tree through willy-nilly composition.

    It is gratuitous to make this chain so deep, when the underlying code is just a handful of lines.

    https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/colle...

    https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/colle...

    https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/colle...

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The doc-strings are unnecessary. It's self-evident what most of the code does if you read it.

            // Returns an enumerator for this list with the given
  • How do I counter "Open source is less secure due to vulnerabilities being open too."?
    1 project | /r/opensource | 25 May 2023
    The whole .net framework source code is online.
  • Difference between String and StringBuilder in C#.
    1 project | /r/csharp | 7 May 2023
  • Best way to create two operators that differ only by one argument type and have the same numbers of arguments?
    1 project | /r/csharp | 13 Mar 2023
    https://github.com/microsoft/referencesource/blob/master/System.Numerics/System/Numerics/Vector2.cs https://github.com/microsoft/referencesource/blob/master/System.Numerics/System/Numerics/Vector2_Intrinsics.cs
  • Multi-Key Dictionary in C#
    2 projects | /r/dotnet | 31 Jan 2023
    .net itself has arbitrary interfaces, ex https://github.com/microsoft/referencesource/blob/master/mscorlib/system/action.cs
  • Ask HN: What book you recommend for advanced programming in C#?
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Jan 2023
    Assuming if you are new to C# - start coding! And start reading https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/tour-of-csha...

    If you are not new to C#, start building an application end-to-end/a classic n-tier application, right from using a database, Entity Framework, WebAPI, DTO, AutoMapper, and a front-end (your choice - Angular/React/Vue with TypeScript or better yet - Blazor).

    You will not only understand & use dependency injection, reflection, LINQ, multi-threaded programming, generic programming, source-code generation, unit-testing - and much much more in a practical/real-world usage.

    Peruse https://referencesource.microsoft.com/ once in a while.

    Follow various team members of .NET Framework, C# team and the like on various social-media. https://mobile.twitter.com/i/lists/120961876

    I am sure there will be who agree / disagree with the above approach and will provide more viewpoints for you to consider.

    Enjoy - and strap yourself for an amazing journey or roller-coaster ride, however you want to call it!

  • FTP Web Request Question
    1 project | /r/csharp | 23 Jan 2023
    Maybe from the source of FtpWebRequest it is possible to track what the default behaviour is.
  • Get MimeType for .NET 6.0 Windows Forms program
    1 project | /r/csharp | 19 Nov 2022
    The class is just a very limited dictionary, a library will be the same or better.

csharplang

Posts with mentions or reviews of csharplang. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-05.
  • Discriminated Unions: Essa feature faz falta no CSharp
    2 projects | dev.to | 5 Feb 2024
  • DevDocs
    19 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Jan 2024
    Certain parts of Microsoft Learn are permissive, for example the .NET BCL documentation is Creative Commons Attribution: https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-api-docs as is ASP.NET Core: https://github.com/dotnet/AspNetCore.Docs (a good hint if documentation is permissively licensed and on GitHub is if there's an edit button at the top.)

    The C# language specification is unfortunately a bit fuzzier: https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/discussions/4855

    The updated unified C# language specification is CC, but it's still catching up to modern C#: https://github.com/dotnet/csharpstandard

  • The golden age of Kotlin and its uncertain future
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Jan 2024
    No OP, but for example you still see the C# folks still struggling to add discriminated unions to the language because of complex interactions due to its too many features[1]. Virtual threads are easier to use than async/await is another example.

    [1] https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/113

  • When static types make your code shorter
    1 project | /r/programming | 5 Dec 2023
    For example, C# had a research fork called Spec# that had compile-time support for contracts, with keywords such as requires (for arguments) and ensures (for return values), all the way back in 2004. While still being discussed, it doesn't seem to be shipping any time soon.
  • .NET 8 – .NET Blog
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Nov 2023
    Hi there. I'm the language designer who created the 'Collection Expression' design/specification: https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/5354

    You can see the entire history of the proposal there. To answer you specific question, we went with `..` because that's what the language already uses for the complimentary 'pattern matching deconstruction' form for collection patterns.

    In other words, you can already say this today:

        if (x is [var start, .. var middle, .. var end]) { ... }
  • What's new in C# 12: overview
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Oct 2023
    You must specify concrete type.

    There was a plan to have "natural type" so "var list = [1,2,3]" would be of type "List" but it was postponed to C# 13 (https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/5354#issuecommen...)

  • Robust Design through Value Objects in C#
    2 projects | dev.to | 18 Sep 2023
    While C# currently lacks direct support for this kind of functionality, there's a glimmer of hope with an active proposal under discussion that aims to bring this feature to the language. This potential addition promises a future where C# can natively offer similar robust type narrowing.
  • The combined power of F# and C#
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Aug 2023
    Given few people anticipated ValueTuple and C# adding a more direct tuple syntax, I feel like it is only a matter of time before C# adds discriminated unions.

    (There are multiple proposals tracking the idea. This seems the most comprehensive and "central": https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/7016)

  • Should i quit Django and move to asp.net
    1 project | /r/dotnet | 14 Jul 2023
    I always liked list abbreviations in python, but I absolutely love Linq. I believe there is a feature proposal for C# 12, which makes collection initialization better imo.
  • Can constructor parameter assignment be made less verbose?
    1 project | /r/dotnet | 27 Jun 2023

What are some alternatives?

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jOOQ - jOOQ is the best way to write SQL in Java

github1s - One second to read GitHub code with VS Code.

SharpLab - .NET language playground

CoreCLR - CoreCLR is the runtime for .NET Core. It includes the garbage collector, JIT compiler, primitive data types and low-level classes.

SQLDelight - SQLDelight - Generates typesafe Kotlin APIs from SQL

CoreWCF - Main repository for the Core WCF project

runtimelab - This repo is for experimentation and exploring new ideas that may or may not make it into the main dotnet/runtime repo.

ILSpy - .NET Decompiler with support for PDB generation, ReadyToRun, Metadata (&more) - cross-platform!