.NET Core Leads .NET Technology Investments

• .NET software development technologies continue to receive Microsoft investment as they compete with popular rivals.
• .NET Core, which runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, gets the most investment and the latest features.
• Planned updates to .NET Core will introduce user interface features that will make it feasible for more types of applications.
• The Windows-only .NET Framework offers the most capabilities but not the best performance.

.NET software development technologies, which arrived in 2002, have been challenged to maintain and gain developer adoption versus popular alternatives that have been mostly delivered from open source software communities. However, in recent years, Microsoft has reinvigorated its .NET managed code platform with the .NET Core offering. .NET Core does not require Windows, and it brings an increasing amount of features, tools, and performance for developing Web, server, and soon desktop applications.

Overview of .NET Technologies

.NET technologies have been delivered in many forms and versions, which has helped developers reuse code across platforms and environments. However, the variety of offerings also has led to difficulties with cross- and backward- compatibility, version interoperability, and the challenge for developers to target the most appropriate .NET offering for an application’s requirements and the expected deployment environment.