Don’t reinvent the wheel

An important skill as a software developer is knowing when to build something yourself and when to pull in a external dependency. This is a delicate balance.

When you pull in a dependency you need to ask yourself: “What if this package would disappear tomorrow?”. Worst case would be that from now on you need to support it yourself. Plan accordingly - maybe add an abstraction to make it easier to replace the dependency in the future.

On the other hand, deciding to write everything yourself might be a interesting intellectual challenge but your customer who is paying the bill will probably be less impressed 💸

During the course of multiple projects and solving problems, you will encounter lots of tools and packages. People might recommend them to you or they are considered to be a de facto standard within your community.

My selection criteria

These criteria are subjective - it is what I consider to be important. These are not hard rules.

• I prefer open source over commercial. I don’t dismiss commercial software but all things being equal, open source would have my preference.
• Libraries over frameworks. Frameworks tend to force you in a specific way of working while with libraries you can pick what to use. Having said, sometimes you cannot avoid a framework.
• Packages/tools that are actively maintained are a plus.
• For a commercial project, I tend to avoid the more ‘viral’ GPL-like licenses. Not because I personally dislike these licenses but because they are usually not accepted by customers/our organisation.

Show me the list

This is my list of useful tools and Nuget packages that I use on a regular basis in projects (both my own and at work). I will update this list to keep it current and I can refer other people to it. The description in italics means that it is lifted directly from the project website.

Syntactic sugar / patterns

Syntactic sugar refers to features that can be used to simply existing syntax for accomplishing a task. Patterns are a well-known defined way to solve common problems.

• OneOf - provides F# style discriminated unions.
• Dunet - similar to OneOf, but with source generators.
• FluentResults - return a result object instead of an exception.
• Vogen - “is a semi-opinionated library which is a Source Generator to generate value objects.”
• NodaTime - if you have to write functionality that will span timezones, use this library. No exceptions.
• Flurl - an elegant way to build URLs & set query params
• UnitsNet - “add strongly typed quantities to your code and get merrily on with your life.”
• SmartEnums - if you prefer Java style enums that can have behaviour.
• Comparers - can’t be bothered with all the boilerplate code for writing comparers? Use this.
• Mapster - “a .NET source generator for generating object mappings. No runtime reflection.”
• Stateless - “create state machines and lightweight state machine-based workflows directly in .NET code.”
• Polly - “Polly is a .NET resilience and transient-fault-handling library that allows developers to express resilience strategies such as Retry, Circuit Breaker, Hedging, Timeout, Rate Limiter and Fallback in a fluent and thread-safe manner.”
• FluentValidation - “is a .NET library for building strongly-typed validation rules.”
• Reactive Extensions for .NET - “a library for event-driven programming with a composable, declarative model.”
• FastCloner - “Fast cloning library, supporting anything from .NET 4.6 to modern .NET 8+. Implements both deep and shallow cloning.”
• CliWrap - “a library for interacting with external command-line interfaces.”
• TickerQ - “a fast, reflection-free background task scheduler for .NET”

Testing

All tools related to testing.

• xUnit - I simply prefer xUnit over NUnit.
• xUnit.SkippableFact - Let’s you skip certain tests based on conditions.
• NSubstitute - “Mock, stub, fake, spy, test double? Strict or loose? Nah, just substitute for the type you need!”
• Autofixture - “is designed to make Test-Driven Development more productive and unit tests more refactoring-safe. It does so by removing the need for hand-coding anonymous variables as part of a test’s Fixture Setup phase.”
• Autofixture.Xunit2 - “offers integrations with most major .NET testing frameworks.”
• Autofixture.AutoNSubstitute - “offers integations with most major .NET mocking libraries.”
• FluentAssertions - “Fluent Assertions is a very extensive set of extension methods that allow you to more naturally specify the expected outcome of a TDD or BDD-style unit tests.”

• FluentAssertions.OneOf - “improves the usage of OneOf to allow easier unit testing.”
• Bogus - easily create fake data for your tests.
• MELT - “MELT is a free, open-source, testing library for the .NET Standard Microsoft Extensions Logging library. It is a solution to easily test logs.”
• ArchUnitNET - express & verify your architecture as unit tests.
• bUnit - “is a testing library for Blazor Components.”
• Mailpit - “email testing for developers”

Userinterface

Looking for things to spice up your userinterface?

• Phospor - “is a flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really.”
• Iconify - over 200.000 open source vector icons.
• Lucide - another set of open source icons.
• FlatIcon - same.
• Spectre.Console - “a .NET library that makes it easier to create beautiful console applications.”
• Apache ECharts - “An Open Source JavaScript Visualization Library”
• MudBlazor - A Blazor component library.
• MVVM Toolkit - “A fast, modular, platform-agnostic MVVM library.”
• AvaloniaUI - “The open-source WPF successor for .NET developers building beautiful, cross-platform applications.”
• SukiUI - A desktop theme for AvaloniaUI
• LiveCharts2 - Almost all software needs a chart
• Bootswatch - “Free themes for Bootstrap. Simply download a CSS file and replace the one in Bootstrap.”

Logging / Performance

Logging and performance related tooling.

• Serilog - “provides diagnostic logging to files, the console, and elsewhere.”
• SerilogTracing - “a minimal tracing system that integrates Serilog with .NET’s System.Diagnostics.Activity”
• SerilogAnalyzer - “Roslyn-based analysis for code using the Serilog logging library. Checks for common mistakes and usage problems.”
• BenchmarkDotNet - “helps you to transform methods into benchmarks, track their performance, and share reproducible measurement experiments.”

Build / install related

Everything related to your build process and installer.

• GitVersion - Use your Git version history to determine a semantic version number.

• Wix - If you need to write an MSI-based installer.
• Dotnet outdated - find out if your dependencies need updating.
• CSharpier - “is an opinionated code formatter for c# and Xml.”
• Banned API Analyzer - prevent the usage of certain classes/methods in your code.
• Velopack - “Velopack is an installation and auto-update framework for cross-platform applications.”

Network stuff / messaging

All things related to networking and/or messaging.

• YARP - a reverse proxy server.
• mitmproxy - “a free and open source interactive HTTPS proxy.”
• FastEndPoints - “a developer friendly alternative to Minimal APIs & MVC.”
• MassTransit - “the trusted messaging framework powering mission-critical applications in more than 100 countries across industries like finance, government, logistics, healthcare, and technology”
• Wolverine - “The messaging and web development framework that gets out of your way”
• Brighter - “a framework for building messaging app with .NET and C#”
• Darker - “The query-side counterpart of Brighter.”
• MessagePack - “an efficient binary serialization format.”
• EasyNetQ - “the leading client API for RabbitMQ on .NET”
• MQTT Explorer - “An all-round MQTT client that provides a structured topic overview”
• AsyncAPI - “Open-Source tools to easily build and maintain your event-driven architecture. All powered by the AsyncAPI specification, the industry standard for defining asynchronous APIs.”
• Scalar - “Create world-class API Docs with a built-in interactive playground”
• Mosquitto - “an open source message broker that implements the MQTT protocol versions 5.0, 3.1.1 and 3.1.”
• NGrok - API gateway. Makes it possible to locally test your webhooks.

Databases

Everything related to data access.

• SQLite EF Core Database Provider - Use EF Core with SQLite.
• Npgsql Entity Framework Core Provider - Use EF Core with PostgreSQL.
• EntityFramework.Exceptions - “Handle database errors easily when working with Entity Framework Core. Supports SQLServer, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle and MySql.”
• EFCore.CheckConstraints - “Check constraints for Entity Framework Core”

Reporting

Sometimes you still need a printed report.

• QuestPDF - “Generate and manipulate PDF documents in your .NET applications”