Professional C# and .NET, 2021st Edition

1.NET Applications and Tools

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• From .NET Framework to .NET Core to .NET
• .NET terms
• .NET support length
• Application types and technologies
• Developer tools
• Using the .NET command-line interface
• Programming “Hello World!”
• Technologies for creating web apps

CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The source code for this chapter is available on the book page at www.wiley.com. Click the Downloads link. The code can also be found at https://github.com/ProfessionalCSharp/ProfessionalCSharp2021 in the directory 1_CS/HelloWorld.

The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• HelloWorld
• WebApp
• SelfContainedHelloWorld

FROM .NET FRAMEWORK TO .NET CORE TO .NET

The first version of .NET was released in 2002. Since the first version, many things have changed. The first era of .NET was the .NET Framework that offered Windows Forms for Windows desktop development and Web Forms to create web applications. This version of .NET was available only for Microsoft Windows. At that time, Microsoft also invented a standard for C# at ECMA (https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm).

Later, Silverlight used a subset of this technology with a limited library and runtime running in browsers using a browser add-in. At that time, the company Ximian developed the Mono runtime. This runtime was available for Linux and Android and offered a subset of Microsoft .NET’s functionality. Later, Novell bought Ximian, and Novell ...