Geeking Out About Microsoft .NET Core: 6 Reasons to Modernize and More

NET Core is the future of .NET. Microsoft introduced .NET Core 1.0 in November 2014. The goal of .NET Core was to take the learning from past experience building, shipping and servicing .NET Framework over the previous 12 years and build a better product. .NET Core is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

With ASP.NET Core, you can: Build web apps and services, IoT apps, and mobile backends. Use your favorite development tools on Windows, macOS, and Linux. -Microsoft

Microsoft is providing the full .NET server stack in open source, including ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework and Libraries, enabling developers to build with .NET across Windows, Mac or Linux. One can think of .NET as a technology platform similar to Java.

ASP.NET is a server-side web application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services.

ASP.NET Core is a free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core. This is not possible with previous versions of ASP.NET. . NET Core supports UWP and ASP.NET Core only.

ASP.NET Core is a lean and composable framework for building web and cloud applications. Making it fully open source, Microsoft has done some amazing work on making ASP.NET Core work across Windows, Mac, Linux OS.

Advantages of .NET Core over .NET Framework include: Cross-platform. Runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. -Microsoft

.NET is a framework that provides programming guidelines that can be used to develop a wide range of applications - from web to mobile to Windows-based applications. The .NET framework can work with several programming languages such as C#, VB.NET, C++ and F#. .NET Core CLI (Command Line Interface) is like other platform CLIs, as it allows you to create, build, publish, setup and scaffold your projects, among other actions.

.NET Core Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of libraries and tools that allow developers to create .NET Core applications and libraries. It contains the following components that are used to build and run applications: The .NET Core CLI tools.

What is F#?

F# is most often used as a cross-platform Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) language, but it can also generate JavaScript and graphics processing unit (GPU) code. F# is developed by the F# Software Foundation, Microsoft and open contributors.

C# and .NET

C# is a strong Object Oriented programming language that is mostly built on the .NET framework. C# is the airplane and .NET is the runway. C# is a language, and .NET is an application framework. The .NET libraries can run on the CLR and thus any language which can run on the CLR can also use the .NET libraries.

C# versus Python

C# was developed by Microsoft as part of .NET. Python is a dynamically-interpreted language, whereas C# is a statically-typed compiled language. That means the C# software will outperform Python in applications such as game engines but won't beat Python's fast development time.

What is to come with .NET Core 3.0?

.NET Core 3.0 is the next major version of the .NET Core platform. It includes many exciting new features, such as support for Windows desktop applications with Windows Forms (WinForms), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Entity Framework 6. The updates to .NET Framework will allow the user to use the new modern controls from UWP from the existing WPF and WinForms applications.

Key .NET Core 3.0 Benefits: 6 Reasons to Modernize

  • Side-by-side versions of .NET that support WinForms and WPF (one version of .NET Framework on a machine allowing multiple versions of .NET Core on the same machine).

  • .NET embedded directly into an application enabling the users' to take advantage of its latest version, APIs, and features without having to wait for the framework to be installed.

  • .NET Core enables the user to introduce new innovative BCL (Base Class Library) and APIs improvements without the risk of breaking compatibility. 

  • Modern browser and modern media control allowing the user can take advantages of Microsoft Edge and newer media players for supporting the latest standards.

  • UWP (Universal Windows Platform) has new controls taken from the latest Windows features and touch displays. The same features are also included in the WinForms and WPF (access to touch and UWP Controls).

  • The resolution of displays is steadily increasing to 4K and 8K resolutions (high DPI improvements).

Mark Hewitt