Why C# Developers Should Embrace the Power of Microsoft Blazor
By Dion St. Hilaire and Joe Ours
In this blog, we share the benefits of using Microsoft Blazor for your Modern Application Development.
If your organization is already proficient in C#, look no further than Microsoft’s Blazor framework for front-end development. That’s because Blazor is a powerful, versatile solution that can accelerate your development operations, enhance your organization’s productive capacity, and improve the overall quality of your applications.
In this article, we’ll delve into the unique benefits of Blazor, from its unparalleled speed of development to its ability to use your team’s existing C# expertise.
Boosting Productivity
Productivity is critical to web development. With Blazor, your developers can build reusable components using C# and Razor syntax, a feature that streamlines the development process and fosters a component-based architecture. This modular approach enables your team to create maintainable and scalable applications while also reducing the time spent on debugging and refactoring code.
Blazor also eliminates the need to learn and use separate languages for front-end and back-end development, as you can employ C# across the entire stack. This unified language model empowers your developers to focus on solving business problems rather than grappling with the complexities of multiple languages, frameworks, and development paradigms.
Leveraging Existing C# Expertise
You know how important it is to maximize your organization’s existing skill sets. By adopting Blazor, you can capitalize on your developers’ C# proficiency. And your team can continue using familiar tools, libraries, and frameworks — such as Visual Studio, .NET Core, and Entity Framework — so they can hit the ground running.
Not only do these skills shorten the learning curve for your developers, but they also enable them to apply their existing knowledge of best practices, patterns, and C# language features. Consequently, your team can build high-quality, robust applications more quickly and with fewer errors.
Let’s take a look at some of Microsoft Blazor’s most prominent benefits.
Prominent Blazor Features
Integration with the .NET Ecosystem
Microsoft Blazor’s seamless integration with the broader .NET ecosystem makes it even more valuable as a front-end development framework. Since Blazor is compatible with existing .NET libraries and NuGet packages, your organization can reuse existing code and leverage proven solutions to common problems. Moreover, Blazor’s support for .NET Standard lets your developers share code between front-end and back-end projects, which facilitates a more consistent and maintainable codebase. This level of integration streamlines workflows and improves overall efficiency.
Even Blazor’s name — a melding of browser and razor — signals that developers can use templates and components for user interface (UI) directly from their browsers while simultaneously deploying tools found in the .NET ecosystem and operating on that functionality.
Improved Application Quality
Building high-quality applications is a top priority for any organization. Since Blazor’s comprehensive testing capabilities — and native support for tried-and-true test suites — easily support unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, your developers can catch bugs early.
Rapid Development with the Live Reload Feature
One of the most significant advantages of Blazor is its built-in Live Reload feature, which lets developers see their code changes in real-time. This immediate visual feedback accelerates development by minimizing the time spent waiting for rebuilds and page refreshes. The Live Reload feature reduces context switching and helps developers identify issues early in the development process, resulting in faster iterations and more efficient workflows.
Enhanced Efficiency with WebAssembly
Blazor WebAssembly (WASM) is a game-changer for front-end development. Because WASM runs C# code directly in the browser, your developers can create highly responsive and efficient web applications. Your applications also can benefit from lower latency and improved performance since code execution occurs on the client side (a feature that aligns with other modern single page application [SPA] frameworks).
In addition to these performance benefits, Blazor WASM applications can also be deployed as static files, simplifying the deployment process and reducing server-side infrastructure costs. This ease of deployment lets your organization allocate more resources toward feature development and innovation — which gives you a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Platform Diversity with Blazor MAUI (Multi-platform App UI)
One of the most compelling aspects of Blazor MAUI is its ability to create a single native application for a diverse range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. This cross-platform capability ensures that your applications can reach a wider audience without the need for extensive platform-specific development efforts.
Consistency across platforms enhances user experience and simplifies maintenance, which ultimately benefits your bottom line.
Web (Wave) of the Future
Apart from its strongest point of differentiation from other solutions — the seamless integration of C# and .NET for building interactive web applications — there are several more reasons why it’s a good bet that Microsoft Blazor will be the future of web development.
Among other things, it addresses all SPA application needs: it operates in a memory-safe sandboxed environment, supports all required SPA features, has a shorter development time, and is compatible with all browsers.
Blazor is also different from other frameworks because it offers server-side and client-side code sharing, is platform-independent, and can choose its hosting model.
The All-in-One Solution
Put simply, the NET expertise, code reusability, and components-based architecture that Blazor can harness make it a worthy candidate for today’s dynamic web applications and a welcome alternative to traditional JavaScript. Whatever your project requirements, Blazor has the flexibility to align with them.
(You can find comprehensive descriptions of Blazor’s many features that attest to Blazor’s impressive power, functionality and efficiency through links provided by Microsoft Learn and other sources. These include the following:
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/blazor/?view=aspnetcore-8.0
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/blazor/host-and-deploy/webassembly?view=aspnetcore-8.0
- https://www.tismotech.com/project/blazor/
- https://www.syncfusion.com/blogs/post/blazor-outstanding-features-web.aspx
Growing Pains
Since Blazor’s ecosystem is still in its early stages, it has understandable limitations compared to more established frameworks. While it offers a decent selection of third-party libraries and educational resources, it may not match the extensive options available in larger ecosystems.
However, this limited ecosystem is a natural phase that many newer technologies go through, and as the Microsoft Blazor community grows, it promises to become a vibrant and diverse ecosystem one driven by the contributions of developers and a cycle of learning and expansion.
Microsoft’s decision to not support their deprecated Internet Explorer with Blazor represents a significant advancement in web development, signifying a move away from the limitations of older technologies towards embracing modern web standards.
This shift not only enhances performance, security and features for developers and users but also marks a refreshing change in the web development landscape. By freeing itself from the constraints of outdated browsers, Blazor is spearheading an era of innovation and improved user experiences, signaling an exciting new phase in the evolution of web applications.
This article also contains contributions from James Hollingshead.
Centric Consulting is an international management consulting firm with unmatched in-house expertise in business transformation, hybrid workplace strategy, technology implementation and adoption. Founded in 1999 with a remote workforce, Centric has established a reputation for solving its clients’ toughest problems, delivering tailored solutions, and bringing deeply experienced consultants centered on what’s best for your business.
