I also find serialization/deserialization to be weak in .NET. Third-party Newtonsoft was king for years, then Microsoft released System.Text.Json. Years later, it lacks feature parity, including an easy way to debug like Newtonsoft did.

Java’s Optional sucks compared to how C# (and Kotlin) implement support for nullable types. C#’s async/await syntax is better than… however the hell Java says to implement asynchronous calls now (Thread? CompletableFuture? idk, I never figured it out). ffs, Java doesn’t even have support for string templates yet — they added it as a JDK preview feature (JDK 21?) and then removed it before final release.

If you want a better search engine, Kagi ( https://kagi.com ) is a good place to start. Yes, it's a paid product -- once you outgrow their free plan, which offers 100 searches -- but they've got a lot of quality-of-life features & they're focused on user privacy. I've been using it exclusively for 2.5 years already -- I haven't touched Google, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or any others -- and I have no regrets paying for it.

The only downside I can think of regarding Kagi is that it's US-based. But until another company is able to do as good a job while operating outside of a Five Eyes country ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes ), I'll be sticking with Kagi.

* Amabile, Judith "Judy" [D]

* Baisley, Mark [R]

* Ball, Matt [D]

* Benavidez, Adrienne [D]

* Bridges, Jeff [D]

* Bright, Scott [R]

* Carson, John [R]

* Catlin, Marc [R]

* Coleman, James Rashad [D]

* Cutter, Lisa Ann [D]

* Danielson, Jessie [D]

* Daugherty, Lindsey N. [D]

* Exum Sr., Thomas "Tony" E. [D]

* Frizell, Lisa [R]

* Gonzales, Julie [D]

* Hinrichsen, Nick [D]

* Jodeh, Iman [D]

* Kipp, Cathy [D]

* Kirkmeyer, Barbara [R]

* Kolker, Chris [D]

* Lindstedt, William [D]

* Liston, Larry G. [R]

* Marchman, Janice [D]

* Mullica, Kyle [D]

* Pelton, Byron [R]

* Pelton, Rodney "Rod" [R]

* Rich, Janice [R]

* Roberts, Dylan [D]

* Rodriguez, Robert [D]

* Simpson Jr., Cleave Alan [R]

* Snyder, Marc Alan [D]

* Sullivan, Tom [D]

* Wallace, Katie [D]

* Weissman, Michael "Mike" [D]

* Zamora Wilson, Lynda [R]

My nephew graduated with a CS degree a few months ago & I have no idea if he's had any luck finding an entry-level job in his field. I'm a senior engineer w/ 25+ years experience & it's been extremely difficult to stay employed. Nor are our experiences anomalous; I know plenty of folks who are 6-24+ months out of work in tech, and not for lack of trying to find a new job.

Speaking of which:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/deepseek-v4-llm-preview-open...