Welcome

Thanks for purchasing the MEAP of .NET in Action, Second Edition. To get the most benefit from this book, you’ll want to have experience with an imperative, object-oriented programming language like Java or C++. You should also be comfortable using a terminal (command line in Windows) and a text editor. No prior knowledge of .NET or C# is required. Since .NET is constantly evolving, even experienced .NET developers will find this book useful.

I invite you to suspend any predispositions you may have on .NET and evaluate it as it is. The .NET available today is very different from the Windows-only .NET Framework of the past. To keep up with competition, Microsoft rebuilt .NET from the ground up with .NET Core 1.0 to be a modern platform. They have evolved it in the open over the subsequent versions and incorporated customer and community feedback. .NET is easier to use, faster, and more capable than it has ever been.