So this is kind of cool. In .NET 10 due out later this year, Microsoft has announced the ability to run code right from the .NET CLI rather than having to scaffold an entire project.

Over the last several .NET versions, they've been making it easier and easier to get started with building apps. In .NET 6, they announced top-level statements which allowed developers to bypass having to specify the class and Main statements. You still needed the app within a C# project, but it removed a lot of the boiler plate code. In .NET 10, it looks like they're taking it a bit further.

This probably puts it a little more on par with Node.js where you could just run node index.js to run a node script. Now you can run a single C# file in much the same way.

$> dotnet run app.cs

The link provides more details as well about including 3rd party packages and more. Should be a pretty cool addition to the .NET ecosystem.