Some people think it's a programming language.

But, it's not!

.NET is a free and opensource environment provided by Microsoft that supports multiple languages like C#, F#, Visual Basic, etc. to create software as per your need. It can be used for:

• Web Application

• Desktop Application

• Microservices

• Mobile Application, etc.

In my blog, we'll be focusing on Web Application using .NET where it handles the backend and frontend is generally done using React or Angular.

History of .NET

If we look at the past of .NET, things were not that simple. What we call as .NET today had a different name back then. Ever head about .NET Framework and .NET Core? Let's see how things changed:

.NET Framework

• At first, Microsoft released .NET Framework.

• It only supported Windows and it was not open source.

• Microsoft supported it from version-1 to version-4.

• Microsoft stopped supporting .NET Framework after version-4.

.NET Core

• Microsoft released a new version of .NET Framework as .NET Core.

• It is free and open source unlike .NET Framework.

• It is supported in Windows, Linux and macOS.

• Microsoft kept it from version-1 to version-3.

• When it was time to reach version-4, Microsoft skipped that and declared it as version-5 to avoid confusion with version-4 of .NET Framework.

.NET

• It is the same .NET Core that originated as version-5 by skipping version-4.

• Since, Microsoft was not going to upgrade .NET Framework from version-4 anyway. So, they removed the word 'Core' from .NET Core starting from version-5.

• Since, then .NET has reached to version-8 at the time of writing this blog.

You might have a clear understanding about the history by now.

Bonus Insights

.NET provides many subset frameworks and platforms like:

• ASP.NET Core for Web Application

• Entity Framework Core for Database

• Xamarin for Mobile Applications, etc.