What even is .NET?
You may have seen the term “.NET” floating around when reading up on all things software engineering. If you’re like me, you have no idea what it even is and may vaguely recall certain applications you downloaded onto your computer requiring something called “Microsoft .NET Framework” to be installed as well. So what is it, anyway?
.NET itself is actually an open source development platform. That sounds a like a mouthful, so let’s break it down. Open source means that the source code of a particular software is made freely available to anyone wishing to use and modify it. Think of it as a “community project”. A development platform is a collection of languages as well as the libraries all made to work with each other. So if we just mash it all up, .NET is a collection of languages and libraries that anyone is able to freely use.
.NET Languages
So what actually consists of the .NET? Well, there are over 60 languages that are supported by .NET , however the top three that you will often see are the Microsoft-supported C#, F#, and Visual Basic languages.
Now you’re probably thinking “Whoa, over 60 languages? How does that even work?” Well, these languages are CLI-specified. No, not Command Line Interface, but rather Common Language Infrastructure. Common Language Infrastructure is basically a technical standard made by Microsoft that allows high-level languages to be used on different computer systems all without needing the code to be modified.
What can you make with .NET?
Anything, according to Microsoft!
Although I’ve originally described .NET itself as a platform, there are actually multiple platforms within .NET that make it up:
.NET Framework was the original .NET created back in the early 2000s. The framework was powered by the Windows Operating System, but as technology expands, .NET Framework is eventually going to be phased out and replaced by a newer platform called .NET Core.
.NET Core is the fresher implementation of .NET Framework that aims to be cross-platform, meaning it can run on Windows, Linux, and macOS! As I’ve mentioned earlier, .NET Core is open source. Go ahead and take a peek at what has been contributed to .NET by over 60,000 developers and 3,700 companies.
Xamarin focuses on extending .NET’s mobile capabilities by providing the tools necessary to build more performant apps on Android and iOS.
So to reiterate, .NET is simply a platform in which you can develop any sort of application you want. The next big step for .NET is .NET 5 being released, which consolidates all of what you’ve seen previously here into one big “package”, optimized and ready to be used to build new apps!
