.NET Standard Aims to Reconcile .NET Platforms

.NET Standard is an API specification that aims to make development on Microsoft’s .NET technologies more consistent across platforms, thereby reducing the effort required to port applications and reuse code across OSs and devices. The .NET Standard strategy could help organizations make Windows-based .NET applications compatible with Linux, iOS, and Android platforms while easing maintenance of the code used across those platforms. .NET Standard promises to reduce incompatibility across .NET releases. However, .NET Standard itself has had several version releases in less than a year, and major changes will arrive with an upcoming version, introducing a new version-tracking challenge for developers.

.NET Splintered Over the Years

The .NET Framework, introduced in 2002, provides base class libraries (APIs giving access to basic programming elements such as variable types and OS functions), higher level application models (such as the Windows Presentation Foundation [WPF] for user interfaces and ASP.NET for Web applications), and a Common Language Runtime (CLR) supported on Windows OSs. Microsoft delivers programming language compilers that work with .NET, including C#, Visual Basic, C++, and F#.