Introduction
In this article, we are going to discuss the major release of .Net, which is .Net 5. This article can be used by beginners, intermediate, and professionals.
What is .Net 5?
.Net 5 is one of the major releases of the Microsoft - .Net family. It comes with many exciting features compared to the previous released “.Net core”.
The first question comes to mind before we discuss more on .Net 5. The question is how many frameworks available in the market?
We all know there are many .Net Frameworks available in the market today, and each framework has its pros and cons. Below are a few most popular .Net Framework available in the market,
|
.Net Framework
|
Stable Version
|
|
Mono
|
6.12.0.122
|
|
.Net Framework
|
4.8
|
|
.Net Core
|
5.0.4
|
|
Xamarin(ios.mac)
|
5.0
|
|
.Net Standard
|
2.1
|
Each framework has its BCL. The developer will decide which framework needs to use base on requirements. Like if you want to develop a game you need to use Xamarin etc.
Also, API, window desktop application, cloud base application, or cross-platform applications has their development approach.
So, there are many frameworks and BCL available right? Therefore, To solve this problem, Microsoft decides to release a uniform Framework that’s called .Net 5.
.Net 5 is a unified platform to build any type of .Net application with a single Base class library.
Net 5 is a single product which has below capabilities and APIS mainly used for,
- Window Desktop application
- Cross-Platform Console application
- Cloud Services
- Websites
- Universal Window Platform (UWF)
- WPF
- DataScience
- Machine learning
- Mobile and IOS devices etc
Including various platforms like
- Window
- UNIX
- Legacy
- Windows
- IOS
- Driod
- HTML5
- Macintosh etc
Another question raised here why Microsoft skip “.Net 4” and give the name “.Net 5”?
The answer is We already have “.Net 4 X” and Microsoft don’t want to confuse the user by giving a similar name.
Let us discuss a few of the key features of .Net 5,
Key Features
.Net 5 comes with C# 9.0. C# 9.0 has many new features in the C# language. Like Records, Top Level statement, Relational Pattern matching, and functional Pointer, etc
If you want to learn about this topic, you can check the below links.
Records
Top Level Statement
Init- Only Properties
- “Unity” is one of the most important key features of .Net. No, I am not talking about Unity Gaming Engine, Dependency control, or version of control. I mean of Unity is Everything under one umbrella. The first time one BCL will handle all the .Net Framework model. I mean moniral, Xamila, .Net core,. Net Framework etc, all can handle by .Net 5 BCL.
- C# 8.0 officially supports till .Net Core 3.0 and from .Net 5 onwards C# 9.0 will be used.
- Improve HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 2 Performance.
- The call counting mechanism improved.
- F# 5.0 supported with a new release.
.Net Release Plan
As per the below image provided by Microsoft, they are planning to release a major release each year.
Prerequisites
For .Net 5 we have to use Visual Studio 2019 ( V 16.9 or higher). Please note that it will not work with Visual Studio 2017.
Now, you can start playing with new features of .Net 5 in visual studio 2019.
That’s all for this article. Hope you enjoy this article and find it useful.
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