All these platforms will implement .NET Standards – a common set of APIs that replace portable class libraries (PCLs). This ensures code sharing across desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games and cloud services. Today, it’s common to have an application that runs across devices; a backend on the web server, admin front-end on windows desktop, web, and mobile apps for consumers. So, there is a need for a single framework that works everywhere. At the core of .NET lies the infrastructure that consists of the runtime components, compilers, and languages.
We’ll offer .NET Core distributions that
represent a set of NuGet packages that we tested and support together. Consuming
Developers Should Use .NET Framework When…
NuGet packages that are part of a distribution doesn’t require an
Internet connection. The .NET Core platform is a new .NET stack that is optimized for open
source development and agile delivery on NuGet. We’re working with the
Mono community to make it great on Windows, Linux and Mac, and
What is .NET? Why You Should Use This Framework
Microsoft will support it on all three platforms. We think of .NET Core as not being specific to either .NET Native nor
ASP.NET 5 – the BCL and the runtimes are general purpose and designed
to be modular.
But since then, Microsoft has embraced a more open-source methodology and has opened up many of its platforms. The .NET Framework released in 2019 was the last proprietary version of .NET. Apart from these, there are other popular third-party tools that we can use for developing .NET applications like the JetBrains Rider, OmniSharp, etc. WPF and Windows Forms are supported in .NET 5, as well as numerous other compatibility fixes. Though it isn’t a drop in replacement for .NET Framework, it should be good enough to work great on both platforms. Microsoft isn’t dropping support for .NET Framework yet, but going forward, it’s likely to be phased out gradually.
Cross-Platform– With .NET, we can build different types of applications that target different platforms. We can use the same set of skills and tools for developing different kinds of applications on different platforms which results in quicker development times and reduced costs. ASP.NET has excellent support for utilizing asynchronous programming patterns. Async is now implemented in all common .NET Framework classes and most third-party libraries.
So in order to provide a non-Microsoft version of .NET, which could run on non-Windows machines, an alternative had to be developed. Not only the runtime has to be ported for that, but also the entire Framework Class Library to become well-adopted. On top of that, to be fully independent from Microsoft, a compiler for the most commonly used languages will be required. It includes a small runtime that is built from the same codebase as the .NET Framework CLR. The .NET Core runtime includes the same GC and JIT (RyuJIT), but doesn’t include features like Application Domains or Code Access Security.
Productive – .NET is a highly productive platform and we can use it to create high-quality applications very quickly. Modern programming language features like asynchronous programming, generics, Language Integrated Query(LINQ), etc. makes developers more productive. In a nutshell, .NET consists of the runtime environment, compilers, languages, and base class libraries.
Xamarin is a great choice for native mobile app development whereas Unity is the go-to choice for game development. Similarly, .NET provides application models for developing IoT, AI/ML apps, etc. F# is a general-purpose functional programming language that supports both object-oriented and imperative programming approaches. It is a good choice for developing high-performing business software, data science, and machine learning applications.
A Visual Studio Code is a free standalone source code editor that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. With a large number of extensions available, it can support just about any programming language. A Visual Studio is a great tool for developing and debugging .NET applications. It is a fully-featured Integrated Development Environment(IDE) and is available for Windows and Mac. One of the great new features of ASP.NET Core is built in dependency injection. It is the preferred way that things like logging contexts, database contexts, and other things are passed into your MVC controllers.
So, targeting the .NET Standard library is the best way to build a cross-platform class library. Generally, it is used to build Windows desktop and large-scale enterprise applications using .NET workflow and data connection tools. According to a report published by TechEmpowers, .NET Core is much faster than any other framework. Thousands of active developers participating in .NET Core development are improving features, adding new features, and fixing bugs and issues. Key characteristics of .NET Core include open source, cross-platform, modern, flexible, lightweight, fast, friendly, shareable, and built for future software development. One of the key benefits of .NET Core is that it is modular, which means you can use only the components you need for your application, making it more lightweight and faster.
Be sure to thoroughly test these packages as they may still have issues if they use unsupported APIs. F# is a cross-platform language that also uses object-oriented programming. https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ The runtime is the Common Language Runtime, which implements the Common Language Infrastructure, works with The JIT compiler to run the CIL (formerly MSIL) bytecode.
- Today, the .NET product provides an open-source development framework for multiple channels.
- Our free ASP.NET profiler, Prefix, is a perfect example of this.
- It leaves behind some Windows-only features, but many of these can still be supported with the Windows Compatibility Pack extension.
- TypeScript is one of the key components of the .NET Core and Visual Studio ecosystem.
- Furthermore, the .NET source code is available on GitHub and a large number of developers and companies contribute to it.
In a nutshell .NET Core is similar to .NET framework, but it is cross-platform, i.e., it allows the .NET applications to run on Windows, Linux and MacOS. So the basic difference between .NET framework and .NET core is that .NET Core is cross platform and .NET framework only runs on Windows. It is a sub-set of the .NET Framework, started with the Compact Framework edition. It progressed into Silverlight, Windows Store and Windows Phone. It focused on keeping the deployment small, suitable for quick downloads and devices with limited storage capabilities. And it is easier to bring up on non-Windows platforms, and surely this was the reason it was chosen as the open sourced edition.
A cross-platform and open-source framework, .NET Core is best when developing applications on any platform. Microsoft maintains both runtimes for building applications with .NET while sharing many of the same APIs. The ‘dotnet’ application host, which is used to launch .NET Core applications. It selects the runtime and hosts the runtime, provides an assembly loading policy and launches the app. The same host is also used to launch SDK tools in much the same way.
Join our 20k+ community of experts and learn about our Top 16 Web API Best Practices. To learn more about all the differences between .NET Framework, .NET Standard, and .NET Core, you can read our article on this subject. Anthony Heddings is a tech writer and freelance React developer.
However, it is optimized for building desktop applications and runs only on Windows. As of the date of writing this article, the latest version is .NET Framework 4.8.1. We can develop different types of applications like cloud, web, desktop, etc. using it. As of the date of writing this article, the latest version is .NET 6 but .NET 7 is in preview mode. Microsoft promises that Xamarin is the best way to create a user interface (UI) and optimize performance in apps on multiple platforms. This is important today when apps need to run on at least iOS and Android devices.
VS Code supports the modern needs of code editors, including IntelliSense and debugging. Most third-party editors, such as Sublime, Emacs, and VI, work with .NET Core. The same API or library can be used with multiple platforms in multiple languages. High Performing – .NET applications are very fast and provide quick responses and consume fewer resources. In popular performance benchmarks, .NET consistently outperforms other web development frameworks especially while performing resource-intensive tasks.