It's hard to believe that .NET is now 17 years old. In this period of time, we've seen huge changes in the tools and technologies. Who could have imagined that in 2019 developers would be building applications for handheld devices, possessing orders of magnitude more powerful than the most powerful desktops of the 2002 era? Even more amazing, these applications are connected to virtually infinite computing power and can use technologies like machine learning, serverless functions, containerized deployments, cloud databases, and many more. The beauty of this is that .NET Core 3.0 takes what we've been perfecting for 17 years and takes it orders of magnitude further than we ever thought possible.
A few short weeks ago, Microsoft released .NET Core 3.0 along with new versions of Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio for Mac. As a long-time .NET developer, I can say that this release from Microsoft has a huge “Wow Factor.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines Wow Factor as:
wow factor, noun (informal): a quality or feature of something that makes people feel great excitement or admiration
I can't think of a more appropriate description of .NET Core 3.0. The list of things causing this excitement is long and diverse and, in this issue, we've attempted to give you some deep dives and explorations of the most important aspects of .NET Core 3.0. Here are a few highlights:
Windows Desktop Development Comes to .NET Core
I think this is my favorite feature of .NET Core 3.0. Windows Desktop development is far from dead and the release of .NET Core 3.0 brings Windows Forms and WPF into the future of .NET development. They're open source too!
Mobile Development Advances
We at CODE Magazine have been fans of Xamarin for a long time. In this issue, you'll take a tour implementing Xamarin.Forms in your applications.
gRPC: A Worthy Replacement for WCF
Users of WCF may have not been “feeling much love” from Microsoft with the advent of .NET Core. Have no fear. gRPC for .NET is here. Take a tour through the new library that helps replace the WCF capabilities in .NET.
Visual Studio Gets Even More Productive
The Visual Studio team never stops helping make developers more productive. I love articles like this one that takes you right to the “good stuff” with a new and improved version of Visual Studio.
C# Keeps Improving
The C# team is always advancing their language's capabilities. Take a look at some of the highlights of C# 8.0.
Machine Learning Enters Stage Right
Machine learning will soon be a requirement for even the most mundane of applications. ML.NET brings the power of machine learning to the .NET developer. It even cooperates with Python!!
EF Core and ASP.NET Core Continue Improving
As two of the pillars of .NET Core, EF (Entity Framework) Core, and ASP.NET Core continue their legacy of improvement. These articles get right to the point and discuss the most important features in this new release.
Enjoying the WOW Factor of .NET Core 3.0
I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed producing it. I don't think I've been more excited for a release of .NET technology in many years and I'm really looking forward to diving deeper into this release. Bravo Microsoft and the many OSS contributors that helped make this release happen.
