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The Many Deaths and Rebirths of .NET

The article reads .NET as a survival story shaped by changing platform assumptions. It says .NET Framework fit a Windows-first world, then became hard to move because of its deep ties to Windows APIs and IIS. Microsoft answered by open-sourcing .NET Core, accepting a restart in public rather than trying to patch the old foundation.

It also explains how .NET Standard served as a bridge between Framework and Core, then lost its central role once the platform unified under .NET 5 and later releases. The newer .NET line is presented as faster, cross-platform, and more stable, with .NET 6 through 10 showing a mature platform that keeps improving without another identity crisis.

Reading notes
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  • .NET Framework shipped in 2002 with the assumption that Windows was the platform.
  • It offered managed runtime support, garbage collection, and a unified way to build web, desktop, and service applications on Windows.
  • Its deep dependence on Windows made it difficult to port to Linux without rebuilding it.
  • Microsoft responded by creating .NET Core and open-sourcing it on GitHub.
  • .NET Core 1.0 was cross-platform and fast, but it lacked many APIs and technologies that Framework developers had relied on.
  • The article frames that restart as a loss for many developers who had to become beginners again.
  • .NET Core’s strengths were performance, modular deployment, self-contained executables, and support for Linux, Mac, Docker, and ARM.
  • .NET Standard is described as a specification meant to let libraries run across different runtimes.
  • It existed to bridge the gap between Framework and Core, and it is now presented as finished.
  • .NET 5 dropped the word Core and signaled unification under a single .NET name.
  • The numbering moved from 3.1 to 5 to avoid confusion with .NET Framework 4.x.
  • .NET 6 added MAUI, minimal APIs, hot reload, and Blazor.
  • .NET 7 continued performance work in areas like JSON serialization, LINQ, regular expressions, and native AOT.
  • .NET 8 is described as an LTS release and a mature production version.
  • The article says .NET 11 will continue the same steady versioning rather than another reinvention.
  • It ends by arguing that platforms grow by outgrowing themselves, and that .NET’s reinvention came from humility and public rebuilding.