Best Practices in .NET I Don't Like Anymore

A .NET developer with 7 years of experience shares practices he has moved away from: clean architecture (replaced by vertical slice architecture), the testing pyramid with heavy unit tests (replaced by a testing diamond favoring integration tests), mapping libraries like AutoMapper (replaced by simple extension methods), mediator libraries like MediatR (replaced by direct service calls), and excessive repository patterns over EF Core. He argues these simplifications reduce unnecessary abstraction layers, improve debuggability, and work better with AI coding agents. He also walks back prior criticism of EF Core, acknowledging it is performant enough for most use cases.