What is .NET Core?

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In a world that rapidly changes with the tides of technology, adaptability, and innovation are indispensable. The .NET platform has adapted through evolution to new trends with resilient relevance. As we progress toward 2025, .NET grows in importance, unlocking unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and efficiency for developers and companies. This blog post explains what .NET is,  what some of its features are, and how it fits into the IT landscape today. We are also going to look at its evolution in detail: answering questions such as “What are the differences between .NET and .NET Core?”, “What are its advantages?”  and “For what reasons was it adopted by big businesses?”.

What is .NET?

It is Microsoft’s free open-source developer platform; it extends support to several kinds of applications, from Web and Mobile to Desktop and Cloud-based. It allows multiple languages to reside in it, including C#, F#, and Visual Basic, and its super framework allows to build high-performance and multi-platform applications. With an extremely rich ecosystem, ranging from libraries, and all sorts of different tools, and including an active community of developers,.NET evolved to be one of the most versatile and world widespread platforms for software development.

Its Evolution: The Difference Between .NET and .NET Core

It came first, officially known as the .NET Framework, and was released back in the year 2002 as a Windows-only framework. Though great to make applications based on Windows, it wasn’t flexible enough to develop cross-operating system solutions. This is how, in 2016, .NET Core was born:  a modern, light, cross-operating system version of .NET.

The key differences between .NET and .NET Core are as follows:

  • Cross-system compatibility: while .NET Core goes to Windows, macOS, and Linux, .NET Framework is stopped on Windows only.
  • Performance: .NET Core is more performant, and it will scale better. The performance of an application probably is one of the most important issues when it comes to modern apps.
  • Open Source: Unlike .NET Framework, .NET Core has been fully open-source and includes broad community support.
  • Deployment Flexibility: .NET Core enables the ability to install different versions side by side, enabling developers to take advantage of new updates without affecting their applications.

In 2020, Microsoft renamed the whole .NET ecosystem into “.NET 5” and further versions, taking the best from both worlds and making life much easier for developers.

What is .Net good for nowadays?

.NET Core is an adaptive platform for developing all kinds of modern and high-performance applications.  Some of its  key use cases (but not limited to)  are as follows:

  • Web Applications: It provides fast, secure, and scalable web application development by using ASP.NET Core.
  • Cloud-Based Solution: Because it is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Azure, .NET Core is also your go-to platform for cloud-native applications.
  • Microservices: Because .NET Core is light, it becomes the perfect means to implement microservices-based architecture.
  • IoT Applications: The cross-platform supports the development of the Internet of Things in it.
  • Mobile Apps: With .NET Core, it is possible to develop natively iOS and Android mobile applications using Xamarin-now also part of .NET MAUI-.
  • Gaming: .NET Core synergizes with Unity to create high-performance, cross-platform games, leveraging its robust tools and frameworks.

Advantages of choosing .NET over others

Source: Microsoft .NET conf 2022

  1. High Performance: .NET Core is built on a modular architecture, and supports Just-In-Time compilation; therefore, it can assure very high performance.
  2. Scalability: It allows the creation of applications that can support a huge volume of workload;  thus,  it fits enterprise-level solutions.
  3. Cost-Effective: Being open-source and cross-platform reduces licensing costs and infrastructure costs.
  4. Active Community and Support:  Due to its open-source nature,   it ensures an active community and fast updates for support.
  5. Versatile Development: From web, desktop, cloud, mobile to IoT, game development, .NET Core allows the development of any kind of application with its tools and libraries.

Are Large Businesses Using .NET Core?

Yes, many big enterprises have decided on.NET Core because of its flexibility and performance that allow it to support complex applications. Organizations such as Stack Overflow, UPS, and Siemens rely on .NET Core to craft solid and scalable solutions. This all supports the fact that if large enterprise-wide adoptions are occurring, it must be reliable and current.

How Does .NET Fit in the IT Industry in 2025?

Some of the key trends driving the IT industry in 2025 will be cloud computing, AI, and cross-platform development. In this regard,.NET positioned itself as a critical enabler of these trends, including:

  1. Cloud-Native Applications: Seamless integration with Azure and other cloud platforms keeps it among the top choices for cloud-based solution development.
  2. AI and Machine Learning: .NET, among other frameworks, provides a plethora of options for developers to extend .NET applications with AI and machine learning.
  3. Cross-Platform Development: The unification of .NET onto .NET 5+ and other additions like .NET MAUI ensure that developers can easily target multiple platforms with their applications.
  4. Sustainability and Performance: High performance coupled with resource efficiency meets current demands for sustainability and scalability within the industry.
  5. Developer Productivity: From a developer’s point of view, though, it means rich tooling such as Visual Studio and GitHub integration to build applications fast with fewer bugs.

Conclusion

From year to year, .NET proves its flexibility and relevance in the shifting sands of the technology world. Such a powerful, flexible, and highly scalable platform provides an excellent opportunity for developers to implement solutions that could not have been envisioned earlier. Moving well into 2025, .NET continues to be one of the cornerstones of modern software development serving enterprises of every size. Because it could keep pace with emergent use, first of cloud computing, then AI and cross-platform development, .NET is sure to remain relevant in many aspects of IT development for the coming years.

Whether you are researching new technologies for your business or developing solutions that scale, .NET is certainly a platform to consider. Check out our new .NET developers team and see how our software solutions can help you harness the full potential of .NET for your projects and organization.

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