C# .NET 10 vs Go – A Practical Comparison
By MK732
Two Ecosystems, Two Philosophies
C# and Go are modern, capable, and constantly evolving — but they come from very different design philosophies. .NET is rooted in enterprise-grade power and feature-rich architecture, while Go is about fast execution, low complexity, and concurrency-friendly systems.
Performance: Raw Speed vs Startup Time
Go compiles to native machine code and starts almost instantly. It shines in microservices, CLI tools, and high-throughput APIs. C# .NET 10 still uses JIT compilation by default, but with improvements in AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compilation and trimming, startup times have improved significantly — especially for web services.
If you're building high-concurrency systems, Go handles goroutines and channels with minimal overhead. C# now has async/await and IAsyncEnumerable, but Go's concurrency model remains more intuitive for many backend developers.
Tooling and Developer Experience
This is where C# shines. Visual Studio, Rider, and even VS Code provide powerful refactoring, debugging, and profiling tools. Go's experience is clean and minimal — just go run, go build, and you're off. It has no generics until recently, no inheritance, and very opinionated formatting via gofmt.
But less isn't always worse. Go’s tooling is fast, works out of the box, and never needs a plugin manager. Meanwhile, C#'s ecosystem is vast — with NuGet, Roslyn analyzers, and modern .NET CLI tooling.
Code Sample: Hello Web
Go:
package main
import "net/http"
func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
w.Write([]byte("Hello, world!"))
}
func main() {
http.HandleFunc("/", handler)
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}
C# .NET 10 (Minimal API):
var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var app = builder.Build();
app.MapGet("/", () => "Hello, world!");
app.Run();
As you can see, both are short and sweet — but Go’s is more low-level, while .NET 10 gives you middleware, dependency injection, and DI containers by default.
When to Use What
- C# .NET 10: Use this when building enterprise-grade apps, APIs with deep business logic, Windows desktop software, or Azure-native cloud functions. It’s also the go-to for Unity game dev.
- Go: Use it for REST/GRPC microservices, Kubernetes controllers, CLI tools, containerized services, and blazing-fast backends with minimal dependencies.
Final Thoughts
Go is simpler, faster to learn, and more deterministic. C# offers breadth and power, especially when you need robust tooling and complex app structure.
The truth? You don’t have to pick one forever. Use Go where performance and simplicity matter. Use .NET when you're working in big systems, Windows environments, or need powerful IDE features and mature libraries.