by Cheyenne Sokkappa, on Jun 2, 2024 7:00:00 AM
Microsoft Build 2024 was A-MAZING as far as announcements go, and while the cool kids were busy drooling over the latest AI features you might have missed something important. That's right, .NET just got a serious upgrade.
With .NET 9 on the horizon, we want to make sure that you are up to date on all the jam-packed features that it has to offer.
Even If You're Still on VB6, Here's Why You Should Care
If you're clinging onto your legacy systems like they're your firstborn, I get it. Change can be daunting. But let me tell you, .NET 9 is like a rejuvenating spa day for your outdated code. It's time to retire those dusty VB6 manuals and embrace a world where:
Your Apps Run Like a Dream: Say goodbye to interminable load times. .NET 9 streamlines your code, giving your applications the performance boost they’ve been craving.
The Cloud is for Everyone: .NET Aspire is your ultimate guide to cloud migration. It effortlessly transitions your apps to the cloud, ensuring they thrive in their new environment.
Even Old Code Gets a New Life with AI: While it might not resurrect code from the Stone Age, .NET's new AI tools are transformative. Imagine automatically extracting data from those ancient documents you've been storing away. It’s like magic, powered by code.
What's New?
.NET supports AI: You can use semantic kernel to integrate AI features and functionality into your applications. If you've been wondering how you can hop on the AI train, a migration to .NET can help you out.
Cloud Native Development with Aspire: Aspire is now generally available and promises to revolutionize how developers approach legacy code and modern .NET projects. For developers working with legacy systems, .NET Aspire offers a fresh start, making it easier to modernize existing applications and add cloud-native capabilities. It brings together tools, templates, and NuGet packages that simplify the creation of observable, distributed, and production-ready applications. We even wrote about how it stacks up against docker.
C# 13 Improvements: New improvements brings enhanced flexibility and performance to developers. This update introduces expanded params parameters, allowing for more collection types and performance improvements to reduce memory usage while increasing speed. Additionally, it introduces extension types, enabling the addition of methods, properties, and other members to an underlying type without modifying its code. These features make building new .NET projects more efficient and powerful.
Full Stack Development with Blazor. Blazor is Microsoft's latest and greatest offering for web development, introducing a host of exciting features that simplify full stack UI development. These new enhancements make it easier than ever for developers to build dynamic, interactive web applications.
How You Can Make the Most of these Features
If you're looking to try out some of these features with your legacy application, you have to Migrate your Application to .NET. This is the first and likely the most critical step in your modernization journey if you want to keep existing business functionality and logic. Once you're able to upgrade the code to C# and .NET, the door opens for so many possibilities:
- You can take your application to the Web. Microsoft has built out the .NET ecosystem to make web and native cloud development as easy as can be for their developers. At GAP, we can help you migrate your application to the web with the .NET ecosystem in mind.
- Introduce AI Features in Your Application. Don't get left behind in the AI hype. .NET allows you to build AI features into your application so that your business can take advantage of all the possibilities AI has to offer.
- Fast Track Web Development. With Blazor, you write out your client and server side development with C# and .NET without having to worry about learning other front end frameworks or languages.
But my code's a mess!
Don't worry, nobody's judging your spaghetti code. .NET is surprisingly friendly to legacy systems. You don't have to rewrite everything overnight. You can gradually upgrade and even mix your old code with shiny new .NET components.
If you're feeling adventurous, grab the .NET 9 Preview and give it a spin. It's like upgrading from dial-up to broadband. And if you're feeling really wild, dive into the .NET Aspire documentation and see what all the fuss is about. Pro tip: Jeff Fritz (@csharpfritz) is building an awesome repository of content and code dedicated to .NET Aspire. Check it out: https://aspireify.net/
If you've been convinced that it's time to migrate your legacy code so you can supercharge it with all these awesome features, reach out to us! Even if you just want to talk about the possibilities, we're here to help.
