I'm Excited About ASP.NET Core 1.0 (Former ASP.NET 5)

I love C# and .NET Framework - no doubt! If you've ever worked with C#/.NET, you won't want to use any other framework in your life. It's one language I know that was developed with the developer in mind. In fact, with so much abstraction built in, coding becomes something everyone can do with relative ease.

However, the fact that .NET framework is not cross-platform has always given me worries. Not because Microsoft platforms aren't rich enough - in fact, their platforms make life so much easier for you when you want to support your code in production environment; but because Windows hosting costs so much, compared to non-Windows (e.g. Linux) hosting. I understand that the reason is because of license fees for Windows OS, SQL Server, etc., but then, my pocket (and that of some of my clients) don't have the brains to understand that.

My alternative was to code in Java, PHP or other open source cross-platform languages, but having done C# for years, those languages appeared tortuous, verbose and inelegant, with so many disconnected bits and pieces of libraries scattered all around the internet (Well, Maven seems to address problem).

So, when I heard that Microsoft is working on ASP.NET 5 which will be both open source and cross platform, I was overjoyed! Sadly, shortly after announcing ASP.NET 5 RC 1 Update 1, Scott Hanselman declared the ASP.NET 5 project dead, and introduced the new ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0. Clearly that has set us a few months behind, but then I believe it's worth the wait.



This means that in no time, I will be able to build cross-platform apps without having to switch from one language (and IDE) to another! Sure, the first release of .NET Core 1.0 will not be as feature rich as .NET Framework 4.6; it's cool to see the direction Microsoft is going.

As an aside, I now have a good reason to migrate from NHibernate to Entity Framework. NHibernate was so good to me, and I'll surely miss it. But EF7 has become a man, and it's time to consolidate all my development platforms into one.