Microsoft made several announcements last week via its Connect(); conference. The conference, labeled a “cloud-first, mobile-first, code-first virtual event” by the tech giant, was hosted entirely online and designed to reach as many developers as possible. This has served as an ideal platform for sharing some of the biggest news to come from Microsoft this year, including several partnerships and new programs. However, the most interesting news is that the .NET framework—at least the server-side stack—will soon be open-source and cross-platform.
According to Microsoft, the shift to open-source will cover everything developers need to work with .NET on Windows, Mac, or Linux, including the .NET compiler, Core Runtime, and ASP.NET. In addition, a new, free version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Community 2013 is now available. This version is designed for use on any platform and targeted at non-enterprise developers.
A preview of VS 2015 and .NET 2015 is also available for those ready to dive into cross-platform mobile development, and we were especially excited to learn that it will include support for Xamarin. As you may already know, we recently partnered with Xamarin and released a suite of controls designed for developing native cross-platform mobile applications using Xamarin.Forms. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, you can download your free 30-day trial today.
As the .NET community continues to expand and change, we’ll keep looking for new ways to make your line-of-business applications shine on any device or operating system. What are your thoughts on the Microsoft Connect(); announcements? We would love to hear from you in the comments or on Twitter.