When Minimal APIs landed in .NET 6, a lot of developers dismissed them. "That's for demos," they said. "Real APIs use controllers." Two major .NET versions later, I think that take has aged badly. Minimal APIs aren't a stripped-down shortcut they're a deliberate design choice, and when used correctly, they produce cleaner, faster, and more maintainable code than the controller approach. But you have to actually use them correctly. Let me show you what that looks like. The Setup That Doesn't Embarrass You in Code Review Everyone's seen the "hello world" version of Minimal APIs: var app = WebApplication . Create ( args ); app . MapGet ( "/" , () => "Hello World!" ); app . Run (); Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Cool. Now forget it. Nobody ships that. Here's a foundation that scales: var builder = WebApplication . CreateBuilder ( args ); builder . Services . AddEndpointsApiExplorer (); builder . Services . AddSwaggerGen (); builder . Services .…