Learning to Code with JetBrains Rider

Every tutorial I found for learning C# on a Mac said the same thing: install VS Code, then install a stack of extensions on top of it to make C# actually work.

VS Code on a Mac was rough

I followed that advice and it was a mess. Extensions fought each other. Debugging broke for no clear reason. I ended up running dotnet run by hand in the terminal because the tooling around it never felt reliable. Visual Studio for Mac had already been discontinued by that point too, so there wasn't really a fallback for Mac users who wanted something more complete. I started wondering if C# was just a bad fit for the machine I had.

Someone on Reddit mentioned Rider

I hadn't planned on trying it. I found the suggestion on Reddit, downloaded Rider, and opened the same project I'd been fighting with in VS Code.

What actually changed

Auto-complete and debugging worked immediately, no extensions to hunt down first. It runs natively on Apple Silicon, so it's noticeably faster than what I had before. The code analysis goes further than flagging syntax, it points out actual logic problems and offers a refactor for them. It felt like using a real IDE instead of a text editor I'd bolted a dozen extensions onto.

Where I landed

I don't usually switch tools over small annoyances. VS Code on that project had gone past annoying into actually blocking me from getting anything done. If you're learning C# on a Mac and hitting the same wall, try Rider before writing off the language because of the tooling.