.NET Roadmap Update

• .NET 5, expected to be generally available in late 2020, aims to unify Microsoft’s primary .NET offerings, although some unification has been delayed to .NET 6.
• Consolidation will help developers by eliminating the need to work with multiple frameworks, and it will help IT staff by simplifying dependency deployments.
• .NET Core should be used for new projects that cannot wait for .NET 5, and Xamarin should be used where needed until .NET 6 arrives.
• Some .NET Framework applications will have to stay with .NET Framework 4.8.
• Longer-term projects might target .NET 6 for more functionality and a longer support window.

Development teams and IT staff working with .NET applications should review the .NET roadmap, which Microsoft updated in May 2020, to ensure their project plans are compatible.

What Is .NET?

.NET software development technologies, which arrived in 2002, deliver class libraries (sets of development APIs) and a runtime environment required by managed code applications in C#, Visual Basic, F#, and other Microsoft programming languages. Managed code runs on a platform that handles many of the routine tasks of application execution (such as memory management and error handling) automatically, reducing developer burden and improving application stability and security.