Remember the days of .NET Framework 3.5? If you were coding C# back then, you'll recall a very different development experience than what we have today. As someone who's witnessed this evolution firsthand, I want to take you on a journey through the transformative changes in C# and .NET, and explain why .NET 9 represents such an exciting opportunity for developers of all backgrounds.

In this post, I'll compare .NET Aspire with AWS Copilot and Dapr, focusing on how they handle common distributed application challenges. I'll share code examples and honest thoughts about where each tool shines and falls short.