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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

Did C# have actual "advertising" outside of msdn publications? It came out in 2000 and I don't recall seeing C# ads. (Print publications were out then.)

I picked it up early on and still use it (and F#) today. I've written a lot of custom desktop applications in it.

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Yes, The C/C++ Users Journal, DrDobbs, PC World, and Computer Shopper run articles on it.

It was actually released in 2001.

Unless you are speaking about the alphas that MSFT Certified Partners had access to.

They ran articles, of course, but were there "advertisements?" These were publications writing about a major company's major new effort.

There's no advertising today, either. What happens is (for example) Rust/Mozilla foundation's people set out to make every thread on every popular forum about Rust.

It is my impression (from 18 years later!) that there was a difference. The articles about C#, back in the day, were kind of frustrating to a programmer (or at least to me). There were a lot of words, a lot of description, but not many details (as a programmer would recognize them). The articles were more written for managers than for programmers. That's marketing. (Or so it seems to me. It could be, however, that 18 years ago, I lacked the depth to see the details that were there.)

In contrast, Go's "marketing" is much more aimed at programmers. It's got programmer-level details. It's not trying to sell your manager on the language.

> What happens is (for example) Rust/Mozilla foundation's people set out to make every thread on every popular forum about Rust.

I completely disagree with this characterization.

Any kind of press is an "advertisement".

That is why people that write about technology are called advocates.

I remember going to Barnes and Noble and buying a programming magazine because it came bundled with a beta version of the .NET framework circa 2001.

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