C# 1.0? That's really your example of an old fashioned language?

jerf · on Aug 6, 2010

Is it really such a terrible example? It was basically Java, but then dumbed down a bit, as I recall.

C# later evolved into a competitive, modern language, but that first release was distinctly underwhelming. Take a look at the closest thing to a changelog I could find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET#.NET_Framework_1... And I particularly draw your attention to the list of changes in 2.0, which include but are not limited to: Generics, 64-bit support, partial classes, nullable types, anonymous methods, and iterators. Maybe nullable types shouldn't be on that list, but a language without any of those things is getting pretty old fashioned.

Sure, C# 1.0 is no COBOL, but there was little or nothing new about C#, and I'd hesitate to even call it modern for the time, even if it would have been hailed as a major triumph in 1975.

borisk · on Aug 6, 2010

>>It was basically Java, but then dumbed down a bit, as I recall.

C# 1.0 had all the important features of Java 1.4 plus delegates, events, autoboxing, enumerations, operator overloading, indexers, foreach and a lot more.

IMHO 90% of enterprise developers today are using the features from C# 1.0/Java 1.2 + generics. It's not some Prolog/Lisp/Haskel clone, but far from old fashioned.