Nobody chooses .NET.
Not as a student, at least. You hear "backend" and the room splits into Spring Boot and Django camps — maybe Express if someo...
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Sorry, genuinely didn't see that. We'll do it from the next time too. Thanks for the warning😅.
I added AI disclosure is it all I need or ... Please help me out.
Just the DEV built-in disclosure is sufficient. I will also reply to your other comment from my post in a bit (when I have time)!
Thanks very much. And no hurry on the reply. Have a Good Day!
Again sloan here!
🤣🤣🤣
What’s the “unpopular” tech choice that ended up working out surprisingly well for you?
For me, it was .NET — partly because fewer people around me were choosing it, and partly because C# turned out to be way better than I expected. 😂
Curious to hear what you picked when you decided to go against the crowd. 👇
@dj29 The point about market saturation is spot on.
Everyone focuses so heavily on MERN or Django because of tutorial availability, but enterprise stacks like .NET quietly keep hiring. Picking a technology with slightly less student hype but high real-world demand is easily one of the best shortcuts to standing out as a fresher.
Yup, exactly my point. It was like so less on-campus competiton like As my friend stated in comments, there were just 4 .NET students shortlisted for technical interview. And other stacks had 7, and to make it worse, Simform(the co where I got placed), they had to do an off-campus drive to just fill the remaining .NET slots🤣
And TBH with ya, I got projects in MERN and Django too. Even MERN one won me a DEV challenge but well an enterprise .NET project from sem 5 got me my 1st internship and 1st fresher job, so agree with ya.👍️
Wow, needing an off-campus drive just to fill .NET slots really proves the point! It just shows how big the gap is between what everyone is learning in tutorials vs. what companies actually need to build enterprise apps.
Yeah, I'll tell ya. There's only 3-4 roles rn, that are in almost all companies that visit campus: SDE, SDET, then role specific: .NET, Node.js, AI-ML. And to be completely honest: I still remember, learning .NET from youtube and my professor's notes. It wasn't an easy path but still got me to this.
I first learnt about C# and .NET during my first summer internship. My supervisor wanted me to switch from Python(which was the language I was coding with at the time) to C# cause that's what they were using at the company I interned at.
When I first learnt it I was kind of overwhelmed, C# was my first OOP language and it seemed like above my skill level.
After my internship ended, I stopped learning it, but I later realized, while looking through job listings, that .NET is actually more preferred in the industry. Knowing it would be a sure-fire way for me to land a job (especially in my country, as it is used a lot in enterprise) was a valuable insight so I stated learning it again.
That's actually a really interesting path 😂
I love how different the reason was for you to pick up C# compared to mine. You were basically thrown into .NET during your internship, while I deliberately went toward it because fewer people around me were choosing it. Like even as I stated in post, I got just 1 project in .NET that too was an assignment.
But the realization from looking at job listings is so important too. Sometimes you don't really understand the value of a stack until you look at what companies are actually asking for.
Also, C# being your first OOP language must've been quite the introduction 😭😂 Glad you eventually came back to it! Cause mine was a bit easier one(Cpp).
This is a great reminder that choosing a technology isn’t always about following the crowd. Sometimes an underused stack can actually make your projects more visible and help you stand out.
.NET and C# are still very relevant for building serious backend and enterprise applications, and platforms like Codecan.net make it easier to discover and work with projects across different stacks.
The biggest takeaway for me: don’t just ask “What is everyone learning?” — ask “Where can I build something valuable that fewer people are building?”
Exactly! That last point summarizes my whole post 😅
I spent a long time thinking about “what stack should I learn?” when a better question was probably “where can I build something useful and actually stand out?”
.NET happened to be that for me. It wasn't the trendy choice around me, but that one college project ended up helping with both my internship and fresher job. Funny how that works 😂
Thanks for sharing this!
What stayed with me here wasn't really the argument for .NET. It was the larger idea hiding underneath it: the value of a skill is partly determined by the environment in which that skill is competing.
We often make career decisions by asking, “What is most popular?” or “What is everyone learning?” But popularity contains two signals at once. It can indicate demand, certainly — but it can also indicate supply.
That makes your example of 200 people showing up with similar React + Node projects particularly interesting. A skill can be highly valuable in absolute terms while becoming less differentiating in a specific candidate pool simply because so many people can demonstrate it.
The opposite can happen with an unfashionable skill. Lower popularity doesn't automatically mean greater opportunity — there still has to be genuine demand — but when real demand intersects with relatively scarce competence, something interesting happens. What looked like the less attractive path can become the position from which someone is easiest to notice.
I also liked the fact that the project that ultimately mattered was a college assignment sitting quietly on GitHub. There is something wonderfully inconvenient about that. We are not always very good at predicting which piece of work will become important later.
Perhaps that is another reason not to optimize an entire career around whatever appears most immediately useful. Some projects create value only when the environment changes enough for their relevance to become visible.
Your line that “you genuinely don't know which project takes you to the opportunity you want” may actually be the most important idea in the article.
Sometimes the work that looks peripheral today becomes the evidence someone is specifically searching for tomorrow.
Excellent piece, Dhruv. It made me think about specialization less as “choosing an unpopular path” and more as positioning yourself where demand and scarcity unexpectedly meet.
Thanks for the read @khalisollis! Glad it resonated, thing is still I don't use .NET on regular basis and if you look at the EduResolve project, it has like very less commits, it was genuinely an assignment and one of the projects, I never went back to again.
But still got me 1st internship and on campus placement.
And I really liked your understanding from this:
Thanks for the read and kind words!!
Really enjoyed this perspective. I especially agree with the point about choosing a stack strategically rather than simply following what’s popular.
.NET/C# is a great example of how “less hype” doesn’t necessarily mean “less opportunity.” Sometimes working with a less crowded stack can actually help you stand out, especially early in your career.
And I like how you turned a college assignment like EduResolve into something you could actually put on your résumé. That’s a much better story than simply listing another tutorial project.
Great read! 👏
Thanks for the kind words. And that's the thing, I still use React/Python for hackathons, DEV challenges but that .NET skills and EduResolve project helped me a lot in my journey till now.
I find it hard to agree with you there. While it’s true that C# isn't the go-to language these days, it is robust, and you can do amazing things with it.
I’m from Argentina, and job opportunities for .NET are practically non-existent—at least for someone like me without prior work experience in the language; they always ask for people who have already worked with it for at least two years.
What .NET and C# allow you to do is build a system or application—whether web or mobile—from scratch that you can sell or offer as a service to clients, rather than just being a startup that only has a few demo buttons. Microsoft offers great ways to develop these comprehensive systems; literally, learning C# means becoming a full-stack developer. Nobody learns C# just to build console applications.
Good post, though. I’d love to work in a field that uses C#. Have a great day.
I think we're actually closer in agreement than it might seem! 😂 My point wasn't that C#/.NET lacks opportunities — quite the opposite. I was talking more about how students tend to avoid it because they perceive it as less popular, which can actually make it a strategic choice.
And I completely agree that C# lets you build much more than just console apps, I've myself worked with almost everything in the .NET ecosystem. That's actually one of the reasons I ended up liking the stack. 😄
This really resonated with me. Choosing a less hyped stack can be a smart move when you're starting out. Your story proves that a single project in the right context can open doors.
Exactly! 😄 I think that's the part I didn't fully realize when I started either — sometimes one project in the right context can matter more than having five projects in the same stack everyone else is using. Thanks for the Read! 🙌
Everyone’s fighting over the hype train while the folks quietly fixing legacy code adn getting placed, that's a really good idea though!!
Exactly! 😂 Everyone wants to chase the newest stack, but sometimes the “boring” stuff is where the actual opportunities are. Thanks for putting it so well! 🙌
Thanks
Lemme make it easier for ya: V.A.L.I.D.
Give it a go, if you wanna try Blazor, I built it to replace CSLA, write all the boilerplate for me, wire everything properly, proper unit tests, debug UI issues and properly scope rules. Also not that tough to wrap your head around, imo easier than setting up a blazor app normally.
I didn't get it sir/ma'am, is this promotional or you just want me to go through repo cause I do know blazor?
Meant for you to give it a try and see if you like it. I wrote it to make creating and maintaining a blazor app easier, while also fixing Blazor's stupid VDOM issues.
Cool, sure I'd give it a try and probably star it for now and then go through it, cause I gotta revise blazor a bit😅. Haven't used it since my internship.🫠
Would really appreciate it! Hope you like it, it was designed to do all the mundane tasks for you (everything where mistakes happen), so you can focus on what matters (data structure and UI design).
Sure I will, just starred it😅. But since you're a senior dev, I'd like to know your opinion about the theme of the post. What was your first stack or maybe which project that you didn't knew got you an opportunity you wanted? I ask it to everyone, cause I get a bit info before I start my fresher job next year.
Wow bro, you clearly find good post ideas and all the posts in this series have a clearly good theme, But I thought this series was about Dev.to. Regardless, Good post.👍️
Well, the "DEV" refers to dev.to and DEV life both😉. Thanks for reading.
And I forgot, we did this together. But still .NET is not my stack like you😂
Well, It worked out for me so I'm not gonna say anything bad🤣.
You should not!! Also, I liked that your analogy of C# is different. No wonder you chose .NET role and it had just 4 guys shortlisted in the technical round.
Don't spill everything bro🤫. I wanna write a new post about the current interview process too. But you're right .NET had less candidates cause more were in AI-ML, DEVops roles. 😅
This post is a banger 🔥 I use C++ with Unreal Engine for 3D game dev too, so this was right up my alley lol :)
That's great. I actually wanted to start dev career with animation or game dev but explored a lot and went it saying It's not for me🤞.
And thanks for the complement. It really feels good when people really share their experience. 😅
Yeah, that’s actually a good point. Exploring different things before fully committing to one path is always better. At least you got some clarity on what you don’t wanna do, and honestly, that matters too. 😃
I’m kinda the same tho. I’m not really into the designing side of game development, even though people often tell me I’m pretty good at it. 😅 But I’m way more interested in programming, so if I ever go into game dev, I’d definitely prefer the programming side of it.
And haha, I’m glad you liked what I said. I genuinely enjoy hearing about people’s experiences too. You can learn a lot from someone else’s journey. 🤝🏻 Thanks 🙏🏻
Thanks for kind words.
TBH I spent my entire 10th grade when we had covid in figuring out how to animate, cause I had a lot of great ideas, even wrote a script but then I got to know about Blendor, Maya and definitely knew from then that I can't do this😅.
So, I went with CS only.
Haha, yeah, it does seem hard at first, but you slowly get the hang of it. I chose CS too. Btw, what percentage did you get in 10th? Random question lol xD
Well, TBH its not that like crazy, it was 94.16% in GSEB but since covid was there, the exams didn't happen and 50% marks were considered from 9th and 25% from prelims, which only 3-4 of all schools in my city took offline and mine was 1 of it. My dad was really happy on the result day. Unlike me, cause it really doesn't matter.😅
@francistrdev, Sir, can you help me out a bit, clear my query?
My post “The Stack Nobody Picks Might Be the One That Picks You” was published on September 1 and had been ranked #1 in the C# Top → Week section for 5 days, including earlier today.
It has currently received around 55 reactions and 56 comments.
However, it has now completely disappeared from the C# →** Top → Week listing**, while posts published on September 1, September 3, and September 4 are still appearing in that same weekly ranking despite having significantly fewer reactions.
Interestingly, the post is still visible normally and is also appearing in the C# page's other rankings/surfaces and is also Top on monthly filter.
I've attached screenshots showing the current top weekly ranking, the top monthly ranking and the post's performance.
I'm mainly trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or there's something I don't understand about ranking of top weekly posts.
Its just I'm new to writing on DEV, just started couple of weeks ago. So it'll help if you make me understanding if something went wrong on my part.😅.
Nobody picks .NET? Are you serious?
Bro, I clearly talked about experience in my region. Yeah, I'm serious and a lot of people resonated with it.