Microsoft .NET: A Platform for All Developers

At dotnetConf, Microsoft highlighted the flexibility and agility of the .NET development platform. Here are some of the things discussed at the event.

Scott Hunter, program manager for .NET at Microsoft, kicked off the dotnetConf by telling the crowd there are exciting times ahead for .NET as a multipurpose, cross-platform framework for building desktop and Web applications.

Hunter noted .NET today consists of the .NET Framework, the open-source .NET Core and the Xamarin Platform—each with its own corresponding base library.

The .NET of tomorrow will be replacing its portable class libraries with a standard library that the .NET Core, .NET Framework and Xamarin Platform will share, Hunter said.

One of the key benefits of the move to the .NET Standard Library will be code reuse.

As Microsoft restructures .NET, not all current APIs will be supported initially; however, more will return after the release of .NET Core 1.0. Meanwhile, developers will be able to move code between the .NET Framework, .NET Core and Xamarin.

.NET features core support for C#, Visual Basic and F#, with support for a host of modern programming languages.

Future innovation for the .NET Framework will include new .NET native tools, HoloLens and Xbox support, and more.

Future innovation for .Net Core and ASP.NET Core include a new open-source and cross-platform .NET runtime and library stack for .NET Core. ASP.NET Core gets a single framework for Web pages, services and microservices.

Future innovation for Xamarin sees new support, tools and integration across the platform, tools and life cycle services.

.NET Core will RTM on June 27 with ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core and more.

Xamarin co-founder Miguel de Icaza presented at dotnetConf, introducing the new stable release of the Xamarin Platform.

Microsoft acquired Xamarin earlier this year. Since then, the company has open-sourced a bunch of key technology and made Xamarin’s platform free with Visual Studio.

Xamarin is using Skia Sharp, a cross-platform, high-performance 2D API for .NET developers available across mobile, desktops and servers. Skia Sharp provides a C# API for doing 2D graphics powered by Google’s Skia library—the same library that powers Google Chrome, Firefox and Android’s graphic stacks.

Xamarin remains busy in the summer as it gears up for new OSes releasing in the fall, de Icaza said. Themes for this fall include iOS 10 and Android N support, as well as localization and accessibility.

Scott Hanselman, Microsoft’s principal community architect for Web platform and tools, headed up “Community Day” at dotnetConf. Hanselman said he came to Microsoft to help the company open-source technology.

Microsoft started with a shared source implementation of its Common Language Infrastructure known as Rotor in 2001. Today, open-source .NET Core is everywhere.

The .NET Foundation is an independent organization to foster open development and collaboration around the .NET ecosystem. The .NET Foundation also provides administration and support for a number of .NET open-source projects assigned to the foundation.

The .NET Foundation welcomes the Cake project to its fold. Cake is an open-source, cross-platform build automation system written in C#.