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As developers, we often fall into common pitfalls that impact the performance, security, and scalability of our applications. From neglecting data validation to overengineering, and from ignoring async/await to mishandling resource disposal, even experienced C# developers can make these mistakes. In this post, I've gathered some of the most frequent issues developers encounter in C# and how to avoid them with practical solutions.

Observability is essential for maintaining and scaling modern applications. With.NET 8, Microsoft has enhanced support for observability using OpenTelemetry. In this post, we explore how to monitor.NET 8 applications logs with SigNoz, an open-source observability platform, using the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) exporter.

Long before ORMs, LINQ, and high-level abstractions became common in the.NET ecosystem, there was ADO.NET—raw, fast, and unapologetically hands-on. It was the original data access layer for developers who wanted complete control. And two decades later, it’s still the tool of choice when performance, precision, and transparency matter most. But how does it deliver that control?

Debugging modern.NET apps isn’t as simple as scanning logs anymore. With services spread out and systems growing more complex, it's easy to miss the bigger picture. Serilog gives you clean, structured logs. OpenTelemetry brings in traces and metrics to connect the dots. This guide covers how to wire up Serilog with OpenTelemetry, send logs to traces, and build an observability setup that helps you troubleshoot, without digging through disconnected logs for hours.

Frameworks evolve, libraries change, and APIs get rewritten. But your ORM decision? That one sticks—it shapes your architecture, guides how your team writes queries, and affects how painful refactors become later on. In.NET, this choice often narrows to Dapper and NHibernate—two trusted tools with fundamentally different approaches. NHibernate offers deep abstraction, rich mappings, and built-in caching, while Dapper gives you raw speed, total SQL control, and zero overhead.

In.NET, data access has evolved, but finding the right tool still comes down to control vs. convenience. You have to decide: do you prefer to write every query or move faster with something easier to maintain? Can you manage the boilerplate, or would you rather work with leaner syntax? For many.NET developers, the answers point to one of two popular tools—ADO.NET or Dapper. ADO.NET gives you complete control but with boilerplate and manual overhead.

APIs are the heart of most modern applications. Due to their simplicity and lightweight design, RESTful APIs are a popular choice for client-server communication in most applications. However, APIs can become limiting when fetching complex or related data. The front end may over-fetch or under-fetch the meaningful data. For example, different pages require different responses. RESTFul APIs require different field endpoints, each involving repetitive complex joining conditions.