from Hacker News

Blazor – A .NET web framework that runs in the browser with WebAssembly

by tegeek on 12/16/18, 3:11 PM with 50 comments

  • by dang on 12/16/18, 9:35 PM

  • by rattray on 12/16/18, 6:24 PM

    I've never used .NET, and don't really intend to, but I think this is interesting nonetheless.

    This is on track to become a "built-in feature of ASP.NET Core 3.0" – recall that ".NET Core" runs on Linux, etc.

    Much C# development is still for internal business applications. For these applications, the overhead of shipping the .NET runtime to the browser in WASM - which https://blazor.net/ sadly does not seem to mention - may not be a big deal, especially if they can be cached with service workers.

    Keeping engineers fungible and cheap to hire & train is a priority for enterprise software divisions. Software ecosystems that rely on the patience and curiosity of developers to explore an uncoordinated constellation of packages and design their own architecture (eg; Java, React ecosystems) can be suboptimal.

    .NET's historical "all batteries included, all applications the same" promise has been key here. But for rich frontends, Angular (their current choice) has, ah, high training costs.

    If Blazor works well, .NET Core may become the first truly full-stack, integrated, get-it-all-here, framework for modern web app development.

    As an uninvested bystander to enterprise software development, I'm curious to see how this goes.

  • by math on 12/16/18, 5:43 PM

    In Blazor, what is sent to the browser is a .NET runtime, then the .net assemblies (which are .NET CIL, not wasm) which the runtime executes. They seem to have this working well, but it's less efficient than, for example, Rust which has no runtime and compiles directly to wasm. C# is very much my goto language, but my eye is currently on Rust in this space because the scenarios where I feel the need for something other than Javascript in the browser are all performance related - i.e. I find React / JSX great for working with the DOM.

  • by masterofmisc on 12/16/18, 6:23 PM

    I think Blazor might have a bright future in the Electron space. Its seems to me the stars are all aligning from that point-of-view.

    Microsoft have had great success with Visual Studio Code and are now the custodians of Electron since they brought Github this year. Also, now that Microsoft are going all in on Chromium for Windows (and dropping Edge in the process) I wonder if they will introduce Blazor into Electron for better cross platform applications.

    I just get the feeling there is a play there (in some fashion)

  • by aphextron on 12/16/18, 8:18 PM

    What's the current state of this? Being able to develop with C# in the browser would be a dream, but the last I checked it wasn't really ready for any kind of serious use.

  • by untog on 12/16/18, 8:42 PM

    .NET on WebAssembly could be a really interesting escape hatch for companies that have heavily invested in .NET apps and want to move away from Windows. Right now downloading the whole framework is a prohibitively large task, but for internal apps it would probably be fine. Port something WinForms-ish over as well and those apps could be cross platform with not much work.

  • by xmichael999 on 12/16/18, 7:39 PM

    Any decent examples of this doing something?

  • by AlphaWeaver on 12/16/18, 8:28 PM

    I feel like https://blazor.net might be a better url for this post.

  • by k__ on 12/16/18, 7:51 PM

    How big is this?

  • by sureaboutthis on 12/16/18, 9:02 PM

    I think one can use WebAssembly by itself just fine. In fact, I know this to be true.