The .NET Gazette 🗞️- End of year
Exploring the world of .NET development and tech trends🎄🎆
End of year
We are back with the 3rd edition of our .NET gazette. As we approach the end of the year 2023 we get a chance to reflect on all that happened in the past year. It was a challenging and both exciting time in tech this year. At the one end we have the economic pressure on the global markets and on the other end we saw a huge step forward in the capabilities and usage of AI solutions. In .NET world we had the launch of .NET 8 and C# 12.
Tech News Roundup
.NET 8
.NET 8 is here, and it's packed with updates that help you customize your development and app experience. This is the latest LTS (long term support) version of one of the world’s leading development platforms. .NET 8 delivers thousands of performance, stability, and security improvements, as well as platform and tooling enhancements that help increase developer productivity and speed of innovation.
You can read more about it here: Dev blog
How to get started with .NET 8
For the best development experience with .NET 8, Microsoft recommends that you use the latest release of Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code’s C# Dev Kit. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:
Try the new features and APIs. Download .NET 8 and report issues in Microsoft’s issue tracker.
Test your current app for compatibility. Learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in .NET 8.
Test your app with opt-in changes. .NET 8 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when enabled. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early as they may become default in the next release.
Update your app with the Upgrade Assistant. Upgrade your app with just a few clicks using the Upgrade Assistant.
Know you’re supported. .NET 8 is officially supported by Microsoft as a long term support (LTS) release that will be supported for three years.
Learn .NET 8. Free tutorials, videos, courses, and more for beginner through advanced .NET developers. All updated for .NET 8!
See Developer Stories. Take a look at success stories of developers migrating to modern .NET.
Read about why .NET?. Read through our recent blog series about the convenience of .NET.
Bonus: eShop Sample for .NET 8. Follow all the best coding and architecture practices with Microsoft’s new eShop sample, now updated for .NET 8!
Other tech
EU AI Act
While considerable work remains on its detail, there is political agreement on the broad shape of the legislation. Though not everything is clear on what this will encompass it’s something to keep your eye on when working on AI solutions in the EU region. You can read about what is known at this time here: link
Angular V17
Last month marked the 13th anniversary of Angular’s red shield. AngularJS was the starting point for a new wave of JavaScript frameworks emerging to support the increasing need for rich web experiences. Today with a new look and a set of forward-thinking features Angular brings everyone along to the future with version 17, setting new standards for performance and developer experience.
In v17 Angular is introducing:
Deferrable views which brings performance and developer experience to the next level
Up to 90% faster runtime with a built-in control flow loops in public benchmarks
Up to 87% faster builds for hybrid rendering and 67% for client-side rendering
Fresh new look reflecting the future-looking features of Angular
Brand new interactive learning journey
New documentation site with interactive playground: https://angular.dev/
…and dozens of other features and improvements!
Read about them here.
React: radio silence
On the other end we have React, another popular Javascript framework. However, React hasn’t released a new version since june 14, 2022. Some see this as the sign that React is nearly dead, but we have to take into account the layoffs this year at Facebook (13% of its staff). Also the reason why React has not released a version for a year is not because there is no work to do, but because it is completing the transformation of the framework from UI library to meta-framework. So in 2024 we will have to keep an eye on this to see where this will go.
Microsoft Playwright Testing preview
Microsoft announced the preview of Microsoft Playwright Testing, a new service for running Playwright tests easily at scale. Playwright, a fast-growing, open-source framework, enables reliable end-to-end testing and automation for modern web apps. Microsoft Playwright Testing is a fully managed service that uses the cloud to enable you to run Playwright tests with much higher parallelization across different operating system-browser combinations simultaneously. This means faster test runs with broader scenario coverage, which helps speed up delivery of features without sacrificing quality. If you hear the QA people talk about tooling, you might want to let them take a look at Playwright as it’s gaining a lot of traction lately.
Tool in the spotlight
Today I want to share not so much a tool as it is a web application. But I recently turned to it when my mailbox was exploding with Azure deprecation notices of all kinds of services. As Azure grew immensely the last few years, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the changes they are pushing through. It’s normal for a platform of that size to have a need to deprecate things from time to time. Luckily they usually communicate well beforehand. I recently got some mails for a deprecation planned in 2026. I think I’m not the only one to find myself just ignoring these mails at times thinking it’s so far ahead. I mean are we even going to be a developer by then or has AI taken over our job 😉.
In an attempt to get a better grip on these things I turned to the internet, as one does. In my searches I came across the Azure Deprecations Board by the well known Azurecharts.com website. This gave me the necessary insights in all planned deprecations and made it easier to plan them on our tech roadmap so that we would never miss one that would impact our environments. I hope you also work with a tech roadmap else give me a shout, I’m always happy to share my thoughts on these and how to get them in your workflow.
Be sure to check out all kind of charts on here because they give a lot of insights on all aspects of Azure along with some guides on how to best learn about Azure services. You can find it here.
Community Corner
Be sure to check regularly for upcoming events and maybe subscribe to user groups like Visug, Azug, …
As always January is a bit of a slower month for events. So maybe it’s time to take a look at some video’s from Microsoft Ignite, .NET Conf or some other event you didn’t get the chance to follow throughout the year.
Q&A or Reader Feedback
If you have some feedback, we would love to hear it, so don’t hesitate to send it to us.
Until next year
Thank you for being a part of the ".NET Gazette" community! We hope you found this edition informative and inspiring.
Have a great holiday season and my best wishes for the new year 2024!
yeah! good news, keep it coming 👍