Over the 20 years of its existence on the market, the platform has come a long evolutionary path, from .NET (News - Alert) Framework to .NET 7, having won the hearts of millions of developers around the world. .NET is an open source modular platform for building various types of applications for any industry.

Before choosing a .NET software development company for your project, read this article to find out all the details about the platform.

.NET history timeline

• The first version of .NET was officially released in 2002 under the name of .NET Framework.  This version was upgraded nine times, until .NET Framework 4.8. It should be noted that this product was compatible with Windows only.

• As the progress went forward, a successor to .NET Framework appeared in 2016. It was named .NET Core and aimed at creating cross-platform solutions.

• In November 2020, the world saw .NET 5 — a unified platform that incorporated the best features of the two previous products.
• A year later, in November 2021, .NET 6 was released. This was an even more advanced unified platform powered by AI capabilities, and allowing to develop all possible types of applications.
• A new major release, .NET 7, didn’t take long and appeared in November 2022. Along with this version, C# 11 came out, offering an array of new features.
• Separately, we should say about Xamarin. Xamarin is an extension of the dotnet platform that uses various tools and libraries for creating platform-agnostic mobile solutions. It has also been evolving, and in 2022, the company released .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) — a cross-platform framework for developing applications using C# and XAML. With .NET MAUI, you can build applications for operating systems such as Android (News - Alert), iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Windows using the same code. 

What projects is .NET suitable for?

Basically, .NET application development capabilities are unlimited. You can build apps of any types using this powerful platform.  

Web apps

A .NET-based web application is a client-server solution in which the client interacts with a web server using a browser. The logic of the web application is distributed between the server and the client, the data is stored mainly on the server, and information is exchanged over the network. One benefit of this approach is that clients are independent of the user's specific operating system, so web applications are cross-platform services. The web application itself can act as a client for other services, such as a database or other web application hosted on a different server.

Desktop apps

Desktop applications based on .NET technologies WPF and Windows Forms are programs whose operation logic requires an operator, i.e., a person working with the program. They contain full-featured functionality and are able to work separately on any machine in isolation from other applications.

Microsoft (News - Alert) Word, Excel, Notepad, single player games are all examples of desktop applications. To operate, they require only sufficient hardware resources of the computer, the application itself and a set of libraries containing functions for working with the application. Desktop applications can also be multi-user. For example, a file editor, which, depending on the login and password entered at startup, will give access to various files. Both the program and the files are located on the same computer; local access control is simply performed for different users.

Mobile apps

Mobile apps with C# and dotnet are built using Xamarin, a popular cross-platform development tool for iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and Microsoft (UWP apps). It’s important to note that Microsoft will end support for Xamarin in 2024 as a new product, MAUI, has been released and mobile .NET developers are encouraged to start mastering its new features right away.

Games

.NET-based games are created with the help of Unity — a cross-platform computer game development environment based on .NET and developed by the American company Unity Technologies. Unity allows you to create applications that run on more than 25 different platforms, including personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices.

Cloud apps

You can build cloud software on all the leading cloud platforms. Microsoft Azure cloud services are prioritized tools for this purpose, since they were designed with .NET in mind. Cloud storage is provided to the user in the required amount, paid for upon use, and eliminates the need to buy and manage your own IT infrastructure for storing data. This provides flexibility, fast scalability and reliability.

IoT apps

The Internet of Things is made up of a vast array of gadgets that are linked to the web and used to communicate with other physical objects and software applications. Built-in sensors are used by devices to gather data and take action on it. Examples of applications range from a smart home that automates lighting and heating to a smart factory that keeps an eye on industrial operations to spot issues. In this context, .NET can also be used, for instance with the help of the Raspberry Pi and Windows 10 IoT Core.

Why companies should opt for .NET development

Support for multiple languages. At the heart of the platform is the Common Language Runtime (CLR), due to which .NET can support multiple languages: C#, F#, Visual Basic, C++, as well as various dialects of other languages tied to the platform, such as Delphi (News - Alert).NET.

Cross-platform. Modern versions .NET 6 and .NET 7 are supported on most operating systems: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Tizen, etc.

Open source. The open source .NET platform is licensed under the MIT (News - Alert) and Apache 2 licenses.

Powerful class library. The platform provides a single class library for all supported languages. And no matter what application we are going to write in C#, a text editor, a chat room, or a complex website, one way or another we will use the .NET class library.

Performance. In a number of tests, .NET 7 web applications far outperform web applications built with other technologies regarding some parameters. Applications on dotnet versions are generally characterized by high performance.

Tech diversity. The common language runtime (CLR) and the core class library are the basis for a whole stack of technologies that developers can use to build applications. For example, ADO.NET and Entity Framework Core technology are designed to work with databases. WPF and WinUI technologies help you build graphical applications with rich interfaces, Windows Forms are used to create simpler graphical applications.