Getting Started with .NET Core

When Microsoft released the first version of .NET Framework, a platform for creating, running, and deploying services and applications, it was a game changer and a revolution in the Microsoft development community. Several cutting-edge applications were developed with the initial version of the framework and then several versions were released afterwards.

.NET Framework has thrived and matured over the years with support for multiple programming languages and the inclusion of several features to make programming on the platform easy and worthwhile. But as robust and appealing the framework is, there is the limitation of restricting the development and deployment of applications to Microsoft-only operating system variants.

In order to create a cloud-optimized, cross-platform implementation of .NET Framework for developers to solve the limitations of .NET Framework, Microsoft started the development of a .NET Core platform using the .NET Framework. With the introduction of Version 1.0 of .NET Core in 2016, application development on the .NET platform took on a new dimension, as .NET developers could now build applications that worked on Windows, Linux, macOS, and cloud, embedded, and IoT devices with ease. .NET Core is compatible with .NET Framework, Xamarin, and Mono through the .NET Standard.

This chapter will introduce the super cool new cross-platform capabilities of .NET Core and C# 7. We will be learning as we create an ASP.NET MVC application on Ubuntu Linux with TDD. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• .NET Core framework
• The structure of a .NET Core application
• A tour of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code Editor
• A look at the new features of C# 7
• Creating an ASP.NET MVC Core application