First effort to unify sprawling .NET estate nearly done with 5.0 set for November release

Microsoft has dished out the last preview of .NET 5.0, saying it is feature-complete ahead of general availability in November. This is a big release that promises to be a unified platform for all .NET applications (including those that previously required .NET Framework.) .NET 5.0 enables desktop Windows applications, built …

[Anonymous Coward]

So WinForms & WPF apps continue to only run on Windows boxes? Not much of a change if so.

".NET 5.0 enables desktop Windows applications, built with Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), to be coded with the cross-platform version of .NET, hitherto called .NET Core, though these remain Windows-only frameworks."

[Version 1.0]

Re: So WinForms & WPF apps continue to only run on Windows boxes? Not much of a change if so.

If you are lucky they will run, but sometimes they will just prompt you to install another new .NET version.

[xyz]

RANT!!!!!

My dev laptop just updated itself today... It was nearly 6 f***ing hours later before I was able to get back on it. They can shove Net whatever version up their arse. I'm binning MS.

[P.B. Lecavalier]

Re: RANT!!!!!

Welcome in the club. I did that a long time ago. Unfortunately, it's harder to find an employer with the same enlightened mindset.

[logicalextreme]

Re: RANT!!!!!

I still think that SQL Server and C# are nice to write code in, but god help anybody running mission-critical anything on Windows these days. It's stable enough for the most part but the sheer amount of stuff you have no control over and/or has to be administered via clicky-clicky is staggering. I want MS to ditch the OS side of things the same way I want Nintendo to do a Sega and exit the console market.

[Geoffrey W]

Re: RANT!!!!!

Oh, come on! C++ hasn't gone anywhere. You can still code C++ in VS, or anywhere else you care to. And then there's Rust which is pretty cool. If speed is your need than choose the right tool, which likely isn't C#. C# is perfectly OK for GUI's and non mission critical stuff, and for a surprising amount of other stuff too. Sometimes speed of dev is more important, and C# wins hands down for that. It's nice to have a choice of tools for different jobs. If you try to do absolutely everything with one language then you're not doing anything as well as it could be done.

Oh, and Powershell lets you configure just about anything without doing clicky-click.

[logicalextreme]

Re: RANT!!!!!

I wouldn't mind knowing a bit of C++ but alas, I'm primarily a SQL Server bod. C#'s only an occasional thing and I've only recently started to appreciate it over Python (it's static typing wot won it). Rust is on my list to have a poke around in though as I keep hearing excellent things about it and I have several years of Advent of Code left to go through.

PowersHell I would like a lot more if it sorted out its error handling, stopped trying to be a programming language (or became a better one, if it's going to be that way) and added cmdlets for the almost infinite number of Windows configuration tasks that still require modifying registry keys/WMI queries/win32 API calls/all three.

[Sin2x]

Re: RANT!!!!!

Geoffrey, C# is not only perfectly OK for "mission-critical stuff" too, it's much better than C++ for safety reasons. It's faster than Go which is today's fad GC-language:

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/go-csharpcore.html

[Geoffrey W]

Re: RANT!!!!!

Ah, I rather wanted to say something like that but wasn't sure as I've not done mission critical for some time, and only in C (not C++), so I'd have only been guessing. Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some that said "coming down from the trees

to Install WIndows XP was a Bad Idea.".

Where's that WIndows NT Backup app gone?

[dwilliams1106]

Re: There are some that said "coming down from the trees

HA HA HA HA HA HA Oh man I miss Douglas Adams

[steamnut]

Unified - really?

Quote: "This is a big release that promises to be a unified platform for all .NET applications". The first scary word is BIG; .NET updates are already many times bigger than the original Windows CD's which kills smaller systems with the exceedingly long, and non-negotiable, downloads. Then we have "unified". USoft's record in writing large suites of software is not good so we will expecting many months of bug-fix downloads. It's a good job that most of us have reasonable broadband speeds these days. For those that don't, or have caps, then it's time to bail out of Windows as this .NET monster is only going to get larger each year.

And, for a final kick in the nuts we have this: "A change to the way .NET interops with WinRT (the runtime used for modern Windows 10 APIs) means that existing apps using these APIs will not run on .NET 5.0 without rebuilding. ". Rebuilding? Rebuilding? Like that''s a trivial low-cost exercise to rebuild, re-test, re-qualify and re-deploy .NET applications. What a nightmare for small businesses that have no clout with Microsoft when raising problems and bugs.

It must be Haloween as this is a nightmare in the making....

[dwilliams1106]

Just want to say hello before all the MS haters clog this up

I think its great that MS has been working to keep C Sharp in the modern world. As long as you follow standard practices and have the right mentality to be a good software designer the cadence has been wonderful. Cracks me up over the years all the tools and languages that have come and gone while c sharp just keeps on going strong. Really looking forward to MAUI will be nice to create tooling apps with UI's that work everywhere Maybe one day apple will get hip to the idea of making stuff that works off the apple locomotive rails, Doubtful though since they have never really been into steering wheels.

Anyway I am just a happy developer that makes products people enjoy. sorry to interfere with all the junior developers who wanna come here to hate on MS. Don't worry one day you will grow into a good developer that doesn't encounter so many errors and you will learn that most tech is fine, when there are problems it is the developer that is the problem.