2021 - Vol. 18 - Issue 1 - .NET 6.0
Welcome to our CODE FOCUS issue for .NET 6. The .NET Team calls this the Unified .NET 6 release. It's all one development environment with a cross-platform model now. Plus, Microsoft is releasing Visual Studio 2022, which is 64-bit. Performance and development is faster; your productivity will improve significantly. Visual Studio helps you enforce better coding style. IntelliSense, which was already amazing, gets better with IntelliCode, powered by AI. You'll have to do some work to upgrade some parts of your previous projects to .NET 6, and to help you, there's the .NET Upgrade Assistant. C# gets better, EF Core is amazing! Blazor gets better, and the new HOT is .NET MAUI. For power users, check out Power Apps; applications in the cloud without coding.
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.NET Focus Features Fabulous Features
Rod reflects on this being the third CODE Focus issue he has managed and highlights some of the great articles about .NET 6 in this issue.
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The Unified .NET 6
There were many lessons learned as the .NET team released .NET 5 during the lockdown with an all-remote team. Rich shows how those lessons carried into .NET 6 with major performance improvements, multiple operating system scenarios for building client apps, support for Apple Silicon chips, and faster and more responsive development tools.
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Bring Your .NET Apps Forward with the .NET Upgrade Assistant
Now that you’re using all the shiny new tools in .NET 6, you need to make sure that the rest of your .NET Framework is keeping up. Mike shows you how the new Upgrade Assistant does some of that work for you; but you'll have some work to do yourself.
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Visual Studio 2022 Productivity
VS 2022 is finally 64-bit! Mika shows you how, with enhanced speed, AI coding assistance, expanded productivity tools, and streamlined team collaboration, you’ll find this new version improving your workdays.
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Essential C# 10.0: Making it Simpler
Mark Michaelis argues that C# 10.0 is chiefly about removing ceremony and simplifying everyday code: file-scoped namespaces and global using directives reduce boilerplate, constant interpolated strings and richer lambdas improve expressiveness, CallerArgumentExpression enhances diagnostics for logging/assertions, and record structs and parameterless struct constructors close gaps for value types—small, non-revolutionary changes that are nonetheless practical and likely to become the new C# norms.
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What’s New in ASP.NET Core in .NET 6
In this article, Daniel Roth highlights the major new features and improvements in ASP.NET Core with the release of .NET 6, emphasizing its comprehensive, high-performance web development capabilities. He showcases innovations such as minimal APIs for simplified coding, enhanced developer productivity tools like Hot Reload, and improvements to MVC, Razor Pages, and Blazor components. Roth also details better JavaScript integration, runtime performance gains, and new support for HTTP/3 and .NET MAUI Blazor apps, illustrating how ASP.NET Core in .NET 6 empowers developers to build modern, efficient, and versatile web and native applications with greater ease.
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EF Core 6: Fulfilling the Bucket List
Julie Lerman surveys EF Core 6 as a curated “bucket list” release, highlighting how the team prioritized long-desired enhancements across performance, modeling, migrations, and provider support. She emphasizes dramatic query speed gains, startup-model pre-compilation, standalone migrations bundles, and native temporal-table support, along with bulk configuration, expanded GroupBy capabilities, and Cosmos DB improvements such as implicit ownership and richer logging. The article blends practical how-tos with context on planning transparency and community feedback, illustrating EF Core 6 as a thoughtful evolution that narrows gaps with EF6 while expanding nonrelational support.
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An Introduction to .NET MAUI
Steven Thewissen surveys .NET MAUI as the evolution of Xamarin.Forms, outlining how MAUI consolidates cross-platform development by unifying UI with a single .NET 6 base and replacing renderers with a leaner handlers architecture. He explains architectural reshaping (interfaces, explicit handler registration, and a mapper for property changes), the adoption of the .NET Generic Host, and the new Single Project resource model. The article also covers migration paths for existing Xamarin.Forms apps, compatibility with existing renderers, and the future openness and ecosystem potential of MAUI.
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Blazor Hybrid Web Apps with .NET MAUI
In this article, Ed Charbeneau explores the Blazor Hybrid pattern enabled by .NET MAUI, highlighting how it allows developers to build cross-platform native applications for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows using familiar .NET and Blazor technologies. He contrasts Blazor Hybrid with other desktop Blazor options like PWAs and Electron, emphasizing its superior performance, native API access, and unified codebase. Ed details how the BlazorWebView component integrates Blazor UI within native apps and discusses migration paths from existing desktop frameworks. Overall, the article showcases Blazor Hybrid as a powerful evolution for .NET developers seeking to create modern, multi-platform applications.
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Power Up Your Power Apps with .NET 6 and Azure
Power Apps help design and specify how a mobile app will function without having to know all those troublesome details of being a professional coder. Come along as Brady walks you through .NET 6’s new ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs, then publishes the app to Azure App Service, imports it into Azure API Managements, and secures it with Microsoft Identity Platform.