Flaem: desktop app
.NET 6, Avalonia 11 and MVVM, a native program instead of Electron.
C# and .NET: what we build with it and why
C# with Avalonia is our pick for native desktop apps on Windows, macOS and Linux, and .NET for libraries, emulators and plugins for Unity-based games.
C# and .NET in real screenshots
The projects on this page on the screens from the portfolio and the case studies, each with a short description and the way to the full one.
Plazer: desktop app
A native Avalonia client: servers, channels, roles, voice calls and live messages.
When C# and .NET, and when something else
A technology has to fit the place the code will run and the team that will take it over. The final choice is made in the quote, together with you.
We pick C# and .NET
Apps for three systems
Avalonia gives one codebase for Windows, macOS and Linux, and Skia draws the controls the same way on every system. The Flaem and Plazer desktop apps stand on it.
A program open all day
An admin keeps the Flaem panel open next to a console and a game. With no browser engine inside, the program starts fast and has its own taskbar icon, system shortcuts and access to files on disk.
A core kept apart from the window
The logic lives in a .NET library that knows nothing about the interface, and MVVM with CommunityToolkit ties the view to it. xUnit tests check the core without opening a window.
Plugins for Unity games
nCatalogue for SCP: Secret Laboratory collects player stats, links accounts with Discord and adds admin commands on Discord. The game is written in C#, so a plugin with LabAPI and Harmony goes straight into its code.
Emulators and libraries with a clean core
We check chip8-sharp against test ROMs, and gameboy-sharp has a UI-free core. Such a core runs in the program, in a test and in someone else's project that plugs it in.
Tools for admins
vantage controls Docker in a homelab and checks services over HTTP and TCP. CancellationToken in .NET tells a check timeout apart from closing the program, so the dashboard does not report false outages.
This is how we write it in our services
We pick something else
Websites
We write websites and browser panels in TypeScript with prerendering. Blazor in WebAssembly downloads the .NET runtime on the first visit, and a site has to show its content at once.
Phone apps
Flaem and Plazer have separate phone apps in Kotlin and Swift. Widgets, notifications and gestures then work exactly the way the system expects.
An interface shared with a website
When the program should be the same interface as a website, we build it in Rust and Tauri from web code. That is how studio was made; we pick Avalonia when the interface should be native.
An agent on client servers
A self-contained .NET release carries the whole runtime inside. The Flaem agents in client machines are in Go, as small single binaries.
Cryptography for many platforms
Plazer's encryption has to run in the browser, on phones and on the desktop as the same code. That is why it is in Rust, and the C# client calls it instead of writing the cryptography again.
A standalone bot or script
We write Discord bots and diagnostic scripts in Python, because they are ready sooner and can be fixed without a build. We write a bot in C# when it is part of a game plugin and shares its code.
C# and .NET compared, point by point
Each need on a row of its own, with what each of the two columns gives you on it side by side.
Desktop appC# and AvaloniaElectron
Program size
Smaller, no Chromium
Larger, with a whole browser
Code shared with a website
No
Yes
Native feel
Closer to the system
Like a page in a window
Memory over a full working day
One process with no browser engine
Several Chromium processes
Access to files and the system
Directly from .NET
Through the Node main process and messages to the window
Security updates
Cover your code and libraries
Every Chromium patch needs a new release
People to develop it
.NET developers
Any web developer
C# in all our code
How many lines we have written in C#, and what part of everything we have written that is. We count the lines added in the commits of our repositories, language by language.
The libraries these projects stand on
From the dependency files of our repositories. With each, one sentence on what we use it for.
Avalonia 11
The interface on Windows, macOS and Linux.
CommunityToolkit.Mvvm
The MVVM pattern without boilerplate.
xUnit
Logic tests in a separate project.
LabAPI, Harmony, Discord.Net
SCP: Secret Laboratory plugins and their bots.
Our changes to other people's C# projects
11 merged changes in 7 repositories. The maintainers of these projects reviewed our code and merged it into theirs.
Week by week
The languages of our changes
- C#11 8.8%
- Go33 26%
- PHP32 26%
- JavaScript25 20%
- Rust10 8.0%
- Perl i JavaScript6 4.8%
- Python6 4.8%
- TypeScript2 1.6%
- ILSpyA .NET decompiler: it turns compiled assemblies back into readable C# code.3 merged changes26,543 stars on GitHub
- NLogA flexible logging library for many .NET platforms.2 merged changes6,547 stars on GitHub
- MarkdigA fast CommonMark-compliant Markdown processor for .NET.2 merged changes5,341 stars on GitHub
- OpenRAAn open source real-time strategy engine for classic Westwood games such as Command & Conquer: Red Alert, written in C#.1 merged change17,537 stars on GitHub
- PollyA .NET resilience library: retries, circuit breakers, timeouts and fault injection for testing.1 merged change14,242 stars on GitHub
- FluentValidationA popular .NET library for writing strongly typed validation rules.1 merged change9,756 stars on GitHub
Other technologies, and where their code runs
Each has its own page with projects on real screens and a comparison with the alternatives.
Questions about C# and .NET
Answers about C# and .NET, our projects and the numbers on this page.
Read next
Write-ups of the projects on this page and an overview of every technology.
A project in C# and .NET?
Describe what you want to build. We reply within an hour and tell you plainly whether this technology is a good choice.