front matter
Six years have passed since I wrote the foreword for the first edition of what was then .NET Core in Action. You’re holding in your hands (or digitally) the massively revised and improved second edition, now titled .NET in Action. The word Core has gone from the branding, as cross-platform .NET is no longer thought of as a less-than-full version, but today, .NET is recognized as a robust, full-featured, incredibly powerful ecosystem. Today, we’re shipping and enjoying .NET 8, with .NET 9 coming reliably at the end of 2024. The community enjoys long-term support versions, and millions of developers and enterprises trust .NET to run their software every day. Modern .NET is in action every day, and it’s fast, it’s portable, and it’s awesome.
As Dustin called out in the first edition of his book, you’ll be able to use a host of open source libraries to test your code, access databases, build microservices, and go live, either on your own hardware or in the cloud. Cross-platform GUI apps? .NET can make them happen for you. WebAssembly (WASM)? Check. Today, .NET powers games on your Xbox and Steam Deck, runs massive distributed applications in containers or orchestrated with Kubernetes, but also powers Internet of Things (IoT) devices and microcontrollers with technologies such as Wilderness Labs Meadow and .NET nanoFramework. You’d be hard-pressed to find a computer or system that doesn’t run today’s .NET.