At Microsoft Build 2021, Microsoft introduced more than 100 new updates and services across the tech stack to make creating easier for every developer. One of these great updates is that the .NET 6 Preview 4 is now available with many great awesome features.
In this post, we will
- Get more insights about the .NET community.
- Discover what's new improvements in .NET 6, introduce the .NET Upgrade Assistance, and the supported projects.
- Finally, Scott Hunter, the director of program management for .Net. will present a great video about the future of modern application development with .NET.
What's .NET?
.NET is an open-source development platform created by Microsoft for building different types of apps for many operating systems and devices.
.Net ecosystem Insights
By dint of the Open-Source collaboration, the .NET ecosystem has seen some significant growth in the last few years as highlighted below:
- There are now over 5 million active developers in the Visual Studio Family Tools.
- .Net core has ranked number 1 two years in a row as the most loved framework on the stack overflow developer survey.
- Based on the rate of the pull of requests and issues and how many accepted, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) tracks the highest velocity projects on all GitHub.
- C# is the top five languages on GitHub.
- ASP.NET core is > 10X faster than Node.JS.
Performance Comparison with Node.js and JAVA
The better performance leads to lower compute costs and .Net gets better performance every release.
- ASP.NET core web framework is over 10 times faster than Node.js.
- In the gRPC servers, the performance is faster than GO, C++, and Java.
What's new in .NET 6?
- .NET 6 is the next version of .NET, it's a modern, open-source development platform for building apps for any OS with the best performance and productivity.
- .NET 6 completes the unification of the platform and adds new capabilities for building web, native and hybrid apps for Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android with a single codebase.
- With .NET6, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build different types of applications, including
- Desktop,
- Web,
- Cloud,
- Mobile,
- Gaming,
- IOT,
- AI.
.NET 6 Expected Release Date
The .NET 6 Preview 4 establishes a solid base for delivering a final .NET 6 build on November 9, 2021, and will be supported for three years, as a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
.NET 6 Main Features
As we earlier mentioned, The .NET 6 makes you more productive, and easily able to build feature-rich applications for any type, for any device with great performance.
Below are the main features that you get in the .NET 6
1) .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI),
For developers building native apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android with a single codebase and development experience, is now supported in Visual Studio.
2) ASP.NET Blazor hybrid apps
For developers building cross-platform desktop and web UIs that take advantage of native device capabilities.
3) Cloud-native investments
Such as smaller container images that use less memory and minimal web APIs for building smaller, faster microservices.
4) More device targets and flexible deployment
Including Apple Silicon (“M1”) support and Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on ARM64.
5) Developer productivity improvements
Continue up and down the stack to improve runtime as well as build time, so users can develop and debug apps iteratively and quickly.
6) Entity Framework Core Performance Improvement
- In .NET 6, one of the areas that Microsoft focused on for better performance was Entity Framework Core.
- .Net 6 Entity framework core performance now is 70% better than .Net 5.
- The Memory allocation has been reduced up to 34%.
Download .Net 6 Preview 4
You can download .NET 6 Preview 4, for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
.NET Upgrade Assistant
The .NET Upgrade Assistant is a command-line tool that gives you step-by-step instructions for upgrading to the latest versions of .NET.
- It helps you modernize older .net framework code bases.
- It will analyze NuGet packages and understand where your dependencies are.
- It gives you recommendations and fixes for project files, configuration and source code to help you incrementally upgrade at your own pace.
The .NET upgrade assistant is in preview and it's open source and accepting contributions, and you can download install the SDK at .NET Upgrade Assistant - Get Started
Supported Project Types
The .NET upgrade assistant supports multiple project types including
- ASP.NET,
- MVC,
- Web apps,
- Windows forms,
- WPF Desktop apps,
- Console apps and libraries.
Additional types like ASP.NET Web forms are coming later!
How you can build apps for the future with .NET?
In this video, you will learn more about the future of modern application development with .NET.
- How to write less code, target more devices and build cloud-native apps faster.
- How to move your .NET Framework apps forward with the .NET Upgrade Assistant.
Read more at Announcing .NET 6 Preview 4
Check also the below important Microsoft Build 2021 Announcements