Are you ready to move to .NET 6?

.NET 6 marks the culmination of an exerted effort to unify the strands of the full-fat .NET Framework, .NET Core and Xamarin/Mono - which began in .NET 5 with Blazor WebAssembly.

We can expect to see .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) really coming together in 2022 – cross-platform app development

Do you like lists? I hope so, because here’s a list of some of the highlights to consider if you’re exploring the benefits of moving up – or across – to .NET 6 and the latest tooling:

• New language features in C# 10
• ASP.NET Core 6 & Razor / Blazor
• Visual Studio 2022
• Entity Framework (EF) Core 6

New Language Features in C# 10

C# 10 released in November 2021 as the go-to language for .NET 6 development, using Visual Studio 2022. Here’s what you’ll find:

• Record structs - declare value type records
• Improvements of structure types
• Interpolated string handlers
• global using directives
• File-scoped namespace declaration
• Extended property patterns - reference nested properties or fields
• Improvements on lambda expressions
• Allow const interpolated strings
• Record types can seal ToString()
• Improved definite assignment
• Allow both assignment and declaration in the same deconstruction
• Allow AsyncMethodBuilder attribute on methods
• CallerArgumentExpression attribute
• Enhanced #line pragma

…Find out more about C# 10 at docs.microsoft.com

ASP.NET Core 6 Updates

Microsoft have continued to improve support for integrating ASP.NET with JavaScript frameworks (i.e. React and Angular) but there’s a lot of new stuff happening under its own bonnet…

• Minimal APIs - create HTTP APIs with minimal dependencies
• SignalR – performance improvements
• Razor Compiler using C# source generators
• Many ASP.NET Core performance and API improvements
• Reduced memory footprint for idle TLS connections
• Vcpkg port for SignalR C++ client
• Blazor WebAssembly – use native WebAssembly dependencies, AOT compilation, JS Interop and lots more
• Kestrel web server improvements
• HTTP/3 (still in Preview)
• Authentication with Duende Identity Server (may require license for production systems)
• Hot Reloads
• Improved Code analysis in ASP.NET Core apps
• Templates for Angular 12 and React 17
• HTTP logging middleware

There’s plenty more info to dig into here.

Why upgrade to Visual Studio 2022?

Getting your development set up just right can be like breaking in a new pair of slippers – you know it’s probably going to be worth it in the long run, but there has to be a compelling reason to make the leap. Lone-wolf developers and hobbyists have been playing with the pre-release previews for some time now but for commercial development there’s a lot riding on making sure that upgrading isn’t going to break existing projects, so some parallel testing will be a must before moving your dev team over.

So, what are some of the key benefits of VS 2022?

• VS 2022 is now 64bit – make the most of all that lovely RAM
• Find in Files receives a big performance increase to boost productivity
• Further enhancements to Intellisense for code completion
• VS 2022 UI customisation options
• Provides a Unified framework for Web, Client & Mobile apps across Windows and Mac
• Improved C# and C++ dev tools (including C++20 support)
• Support for multiple repositories in the same solution
• .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI) Preview 10
• XAML and .NET Hot Reload

Ready to give it a spin? You can download Visual Studio 2022 right now.

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