Introduction to .NET

Welcome to the .NET ecosystem. This document provides a high-level overview of what .NET is, its capabilities, and why it's a powerful platform for building modern applications.

What is .NET?

.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many different types of applications. With .NET, you can:

• Build web, mobile, desktop, IoT, AI, and more.
• Use C#, F#, or Visual Basic to write code.
• Run your applications on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Leverage a rich set of libraries and tools.

Key Features and Benefits

• Performance

  .NET is designed for high performance. It includes a highly optimized runtime and JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation to ensure your applications run efficiently.

• Cross-Platform Development

  Write code once and deploy it on various operating systems. .NET Core (and its successor, .NET 5+) is built with cross-platform compatibility as a primary goal.

• Open Source and Community-Driven

  .NET is open-source on GitHub, fostering a vibrant community of developers who contribute to its development and improvement.

• Unified Platform

  .NET aims to unify the .NET landscape into a single product. This means a consistent development experience and a shared set of APIs across different application types.

• Productivity

  With powerful IDEs like Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, along with robust tooling, .NET helps developers build applications faster and with higher quality.

Application Types You Can Build

.NET supports a wide range of application development scenarios:

• Web Applications: Using ASP.NET Core for building fast, scalable web apps, APIs, and microservices.
• Cloud-Native Applications: Optimized for cloud environments with support for containers and microservices architectures.
• Desktop Applications: For Windows with WPF and Windows Forms, and cross-platform with .NET MAUI and Avalonia UI.
• Mobile Applications: Cross-platform mobile apps with .NET MAUI.
• Games: With the Unity game engine.
• AI & Machine Learning: Integrating machine learning models with ML.NET.
• Internet of Things (IoT): Building applications for connected devices.

A Simple "Hello, World!" Example

Here's a basic "Hello, World!" program written in C#:

using System;

public class HelloWorld
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello, .NET World!");
    }
}
            

Next Steps

Now that you have a basic understanding of .NET, you can dive deeper:

• Getting Started with .NET
• Explore Core Concepts
• Try out our Tutorials