[ewjt]

Magic means “hidden complexity”, AKA “abstraction”. The negative connotation is that sometimes you can’t figure out why your software is behaving a certain way and what you need to do about it.

The positive connotation is that you write less code with less cognitive overhead.

Generally I prefer ASP.NET over things like Spring and Ruby on Rails because it has less magic, despite being clearly inspired by both of those.

Here’s a concrete ASP.NET example: You can put an [ApiController] attribute on your controllers and it can change the structure of error responses, among other things. [1]

I don’t agree with some of the other parent points. For example, the comments on “multiple dependency injection container” —- ASP.NET is pretty prescriptive on DI patterns. That sounds like someone made a decision to add complexity, which is on them.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/66546105

[metaltyphoon]

So "non magic" means to write everything then? Because the example you showed you have to understand a language feature, attributes. Then see the source code, which is open, and how it's being used.

So, are Rust macros, or C macros, C++ templating magic or it's just means "I don't want to know how this works therefore it's magic"?