Why Blazor?

Not that long ago, I got asked by a random person on Facebook if I work with Blazor.

I said, “Yes, yes I do”.

He then continued with a long remark telling me Blazor would never beat Angular, React, or Vue.

I see these kinds of remarks quite often, and it’s essential to understand that beating other Single-Page Application (SPA) frameworks has never been the goal. This is not Highlander, and there can be more than one.

Learning web development has previously been pretty tough. Not only do we need to know ASP.NET for the server but we also need to learn an SPA framework like React, Angular, or Vue.

But it doesn’t end there. We also need to learn npm, Bower, and Parcel, as well as JavaScript or TypeScript.

We need to understand transpiling and build that into our development pipeline. This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg; depending on the technology, we need to explore other rabbit holes.

Blazor is an excellent choice for .NET developers to write interactive web applications without needing to learn (or keep up with) everything we just mentioned. We can leverage our existing C# knowledge and the packages we use and share code between the server and client.

I usually say, “Blazor removes all the things I hate about web development.” I guess the saying should be, “Blazor can remove all the things I hate about web development.” With Blazor, it is still possible to do JavaScript interop and use JavaScript frameworks or other SPA frameworks from within Blazor, but we don’t have to.

Blazor has opened a door where I can feel productive and confident I am creating a great user experience for my users, with my existing C# knowledge.