What is exactly .NET?

.NET Framework is a software development framework for building and running applications on Windows.

.NET Framework is part of the .NET platform, a collection of technologies for building apps for Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and more.

.NET is a developer platform made up of tools, programming languages, and libraries for building many different types of applications.

There are various implementations of .NET. Each implementation allows .NET code to execute in different places—Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and many more.

1. .NET Framework is the original implementation of .NET. It supports running websites, services, desktop apps, and more on Windows.
2. .NET Core is a cross-platform implementation for running websites, services, and console apps on Windows, Linux, and macOS. .NET Core is open source on GitHub.
3. Xamarin/Mono is a .NET implementation for running apps on all the major mobile operating systems, including iOS and Android.

.NET Standard is a formal specification of the APIs that are common across .NET implementations. This allows the same code and libraries to run on different implementations.

.NET is a framework tool that supports many programming languages and many technologies. .NET support 60+ programming languages. In 60+ programming languages, 9 are designed by Microsoft and remaining are designed by non-Microsoft.

Microsoft designed programming languages are as follows

1. VB.NET
2. C#.NET
3. VC++.NET
4. J#.NET
5. F#.NET
6. Jscript.NET
7. WindowsPowerShell
8. Iron phyton
9. Iron Ruby

Technologies supported by the .NET framework are as follows

1. ASP.NET (Active Server Pages.NET)
2. ADO.NET (Active Data Object.NET)
3. WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)
4. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
5. WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation)
6. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
7. LINQ (Language Integrated Query)

Architecture of .NET Framework

The two major components of .NET Framework are the Common Language Runtime and the .NET Framework Class Library.

• The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is the execution engine that handles running applications. It provides services like thread management, garbage collection, type-safety, exception handling, and more.
• The Class Library provides a set of APIs and types for common functionality. It provides types for strings, dates, numbers, etc. The Class Library includes APIs for reading and writing files, connecting to databases, drawing, and more.

.NET applications are written in the C#, F#, or Visual Basic programming language. Code is compiled into a language-agnostic Common Intermediate Language (CIL). Compiled code is stored in assemblies—files with a .dll or .exe file extension.

When an app runs, the CLR takes the assembly and uses a just-in-time compiler (JIT) to turn it into machine code that can execute on the specific architecture of the computer it is running on.

What is the difference between .NET Core and .NET Framework?

.NET Core and .NET Framework share many of the same components and you can share code across the two. Some key differences include:

• .NET Core is cross-platform and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. .NET Framework only runs on Windows.
• .NET Core is open-source and accepts contributions from the community. The .NET Framework source code is available, but does not take direct contributions.
• The majority of .NET innovation happens in .NET Core.
• .NET Framework is included in Windows and automatically updated machine-wide by Windows Update. .NET Core is shipped independently.