Microsoft released .NET 6, the culmination of a vast unification effort to transform the Windows-only, proprietary .NET Framework into a single open-source, cross-platform development offering for all types of .NET projects.

So .NET Core 2.0 arrived in 2017 as an open-source, cross-platform alternative to .NET Framework and then the "Core" label was ditched last year in favor of just .NET 5, .NET 6, and so on in the future.

.NET 6 is yet another huge upgraded .NET version that includes approximately equal amounts of performance, feature, usability, and security upgrades. With enhancements that will make firms providing .NET development services more effective and capable in their day-to-day development, as well as increase the performance and lower the expenses of the apps in production. Those who have already begun using .NET 6 are giving it high marks.

Highlights of .NET 6 | The Fastest .NET to Date:

Overall Performance has Improved:

In recent years, the .NET team has worked hard to improve platform performance in terms of compiling and execution time, as well as memory consumption. These enhancements may be seen in various places of the framework with .NET 6. Efforts to improve inner-loop efficiency in .NET project development, for example, have shown remarkable results.

Hot Reload:

When building for the web, it's difficult to exaggerate the necessity of a quick feedback loop. Because so much of "contemporary" web development is making minor changes to HTML, CSS, and UI logic, it's tough to iterate your design quickly while you wait for those changes to take effect in the browser.

Improving this feedback loop was a major priority for .NET. 6 and preview releases have shown consistent gains with each release. Hot Reload support is now available for both Visual Studio and .NET watch and it works well in general. When you alter your components, the browser updates almost instantaneously and if hot reload fails for any reason, you will be prompted to perform a full rebuild.

Browsers, Clouds, PCs, Mobile Devices and the Internet of Things are all part of a Unified Platform:

With .NET 5, the concept of a unified platform for the .NET world began. That release was intended to be the unified replacement to the various .NET flavors: .NET Framework, .NET Standard, .NET Core, Mono, and so on. However, an essential component of the puzzle was missing at the time: a unified framework for creating cross-platform UIs.

With .NET 6, firms providing .NET development services can develop your application and run it practically anywhere from desktop to mobile, web to cloud. The new .NET MAUI framework, in particular, allows the developers to design desktop and mobile native user interfaces from the same codebase.

Increased Security:

The security of .NET 6 has been greatly improved. Security is a critical focus for the .NET platform and this time around, .NET 6 includes mitigations for threat modeling, cryptography and defence in depth. All cryptographic activities on Linux rely on OpenSSL, but on Windows and macOS, this can be accomplished using OS-provided capabilities.

Arm64 Compatibility:

More in .NET does not necessarily imply larger apps or runtimes. The .NET 6 migration is the first step in a bigger transition to a more composable SDK. Rather than packaging everything into a single SDK, the .Net SDK will become more modular, only loading support for the workloads that your code targets. Mobile support will not be integrated into code running on Windows and vice versa. Support for optional workloads like this should make it easier to manage dependencies in your code and provide fewer apps to clients.

With the growing interest in ARM support on Windows, .NET 6 will enhance ARM64 support for key .NET technologies. Windows Forms and WPF are now available on ARM Windows desktops, .NET 6 will make it easier to migrate older .NET applications to ARM devices. .NET 6 for macOS will also support Apple Silicon, eliminating the requirement for Rosetta emulation.

C# 10 and F# 6 with Language Enhancement:

To reduce the number of usings required, C# 10 includes a new global using directive and implicit usings, which are stated at the top of each file. Meanwhile, implicit usings add common global using directives for various sorts of projects automatically.

The latest version of Microsoft's functional programming language makes it easier for a .NET development company to construct robust, concise and performant code. F# 6 aims to make F# easier to use and more performant. This applies to language design, libraries and tooling. Its goal is to eliminate language quirks that startle consumers or create unneeded roadblocks on the way to adoption.

Enhanced Cloud Diagnostics:

Cloud diagnostics have been improved with the release of .NET 6. Cloud diagnostics provide real-time error monitoring to investigate, diagnose, and resolve performance-impacting problems. This is enhanced in .NET 6.0 with OpenTelemetry and .NET monitor.

HTTP/3, JSON processing and Mathematics APIs have all been upgraded:

In .NET 6, JSON APIs are more capable and provide a considerable performance boost. The system now has performance-oriented System.Text.Json, HTTP/3 and many more APIs that have seen significant changes in .NET 6.

Version with Long-Term Support:

The LTS version is one of the most important aspects of this release. Yes, .NET 6.0 is the LTS version and it will be available for the next three years. It's also worth noting that .NET 6 is incompatible with Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio for Mac 8, and MSBuild 16. If you want to use .NET 6, you must upgrade to Visual Studio 2022.

.NET 6: Optimise Performance, Usability, Functionality, and Security

Microsoft and the team refer to .NET 6 as the "Fastest .NET ever" to highlight substantial performance advancements that make .NET quicker, more efficient, more secure. Developers all across the world are ecstatic about .NET 6, which now supports Apple Silicon (Arm64) and has been optimised for Windows Arm64. With enhancements to file I/O, hot reload, PGO, and APIs, .NET is poised to boost developer productivity, performance, and speed.

Conclusion:

This brief summary of .NET 6 demonstrates that it is a consolidation release of the .NET platform. It attempts to fulfill the unified platform concept begun with .NET 5, enhances the platform's internals to deliver the best performance and begins a process of development simplicity that will most likely be expanded in future releases.

.NET 6 is designed to make .NET development companies more efficient and capable in their day-to-day programming, not just more productive, .NET 6's new features and performance enhancements also decrease the costs and time, allowing developers to design apps that are faster, more secure, and more reliable.