What is Dot Net Core?

Dot Net Core is the cross-platform version of the Dot Net Framework that supports Windows, macOS and Linux. It can be used in device, cloud, and embedded/IoT scenarios.

It is an open source and modular .NET platform for creating modern web apps, micro services, libraries and console applications (it’s on github!)  It represents the biggest transformation of .NET since it was first released around 15 years ago. It was released on June 27, 2016.

It has been rebuilt to better target more recent technological innovations, such as highly distributed cloud applications, micro services and containers, and it follows from competitive pressures on Microsoft to broaden their technological base.

Being cross-platform wasn’t the only benefit out of a complete re-write of the code base. There are major companies that have reported a significant increase in performance and also a shortening of release cycles. Illyriad Games, the team behind Age of Ascent, reported a 10-fold increase in performance using ASP.NET Core with Azure Service Fabric. NetEase, a leading IT company in China, says “.NET Core has reduced our release cycle by 20% and cost on engineering resources by 30%.” When speaking about the throughput improvements and cost savings: “Additionally, it has made it possible to reduce the number of VMs needed in production by half.”

Throughput has been reported to be 8 times better than Node.js and almost 3 times better than Go, on the same hardware, and they are continually improving things.

If you are utilising Microsoft technology platforms, this release simply cannot be ignored. This release will define Dot Net for the next decade.