Installing .NET Core 3

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Machine Learning and ML.NET, .NET Core 3 is the preferred .NET framework at the time of writing when targeting multiple platforms, due to the optimization work achieved during the development of .NET Core 3. At the time of writing .NET Core 3 is not bundled with the Visual Studio Installer prior to version 16.3.0 and needs to be downloaded separately here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core/3.0. The download specifically used through the scope of this book is version 3.0.100, but a newer version may be available by the time you are reading this. For those readers who are curious, the runtime is bundled with the SDK.

You can verify that the installation was successful by opening a PowerShell or Command Prompt and executing the following command:

dotnet --version
3.0.100

The output should begin with 3, as shown here. At the time of writing, 3.0.100 is the latest production version available.