When comparing C# vs Lobster, the Slant community recommends Lobster for most people. In the question“What are the best compiled programming languages?” Lobster is ranked 15th while C# is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Lobster is:
Unlike Rust doesn't make the programmer jump through hoops, mainly automatic. Does an analysis similar to the Rust borrow checker to infer lifetimes, but makes life easier on the programmer.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Versatile
.NET offers rich functionality.
Pro Visual Studio
The Visual Studio IDE offers one of the best development environments. The Community Edition and Visual Studio Code can be used for free.
Pro Forms
Can be designed visually with the Visual Studio designer for traditional Windows forms, WPF, or Web forms.
Pro 3rd Party support
Lot's of tools and libraries available.
Pro Can be used in a variety of fields
With Xamarin for Mobile (ios, android),
with .net core asp for server (linux, windows),
with .net core for desktop (windows, mac),
with mono for desktop (windows, linux),
with blazor for web client with webassembly.
However, it is not considered top for any of those categories, but it is top choice for Windows desktop with .net framework and top choice for Unity.
.net 5 will unify frameworks similar to JVM (just one).
Pro Cross-Platform
Runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Pro Supported By Microsoft
Constant updates and bug fixes to many popular frameworks, as well as great first-party support from Microsoft. This can be a con as well in certain circumstances.
Pro It is a C like language
Being a C like language counts in favor for it as a general purpose programming language, given the ease of using existing skills to pick up this language easily.
There are other superior languages that could be used as a general purpose, such as: F#, Haskell, but the complexity of those languages, being functional, make them strange to the usual C Syntax.
C# is better than C whenever garbage collection, Objects, classes, data access, are needed. But C is going to be the choice when hardware access and performance are paramount.
Pro Compile time reference counting
Unlike Rust doesn't make the programmer jump through hoops, mainly automatic. Does an analysis similar to the Rust borrow checker to infer lifetimes, but makes life easier on the programmer.
Pro Python-esque syntax
There's an audience who loves that.
Pro WebAssembly backend
More options for users.
Pro Inline structs
Structs are allocated in their parent, and come at zero overhead.
Pro Automatic memory management
Better than Rust. No sadism.
Pro Type inference algorithm
Just works. Goes further than most languages in terms of allowing code without types.
Cons
Con Learning curve
For a beginner the .NET framework can be daunting, the rich functionality means that things often can be done in several ways.
Con Very large runtime
Cannot be used for embedded programming.
Con Microsoft will mess up with the Visual studio installation
And all of a sudden you'll need to reinstall the entire thing just because it stopped working.
Microsoft assumes that every workstation is connected to the Internet then it is always pushing updates.
Con .NET is a mess
Troublesome in regards to being Microsoft centric, updates, security, excessively large, cross-platform issues, etc...
Con Windows OS centric
Not very good at being a cross-platform programming language.
Con Strictly object oriented
Con Owned by Microsoft
And like always, Microsoft is to be avoided, no exceptions.
Con Small community
Lead doesn't appear to be so ambitious or has a vision to push making more popular.
Con Compile time reference counting not 100%
Around 5% of time, need to escape to runtime reference counting. Working to get the percentage as low as possible.
Con Lobster not yet totally written in Lobster
Core written in C++. Plans to change that, but has been a long time.
Con Python-like syntax, but different use case and domain
Not Python compatible and often significantly different in purpose and use cases.