Microsoft Build 2024: The Comprehensive .NET Recap in 6 Minutes!

Welcome back to our blog where today we’re diving into the whirlwind of updates from Microsoft Build 2024, with a special focus on all things .NET. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just curious about the latest tech trends, we’ve got a rapid-fire overview ready for you. For additional details, don’t forget to check the resources linked below, and if you’re keen on deep dives, make sure to follow our upcoming posts.

Introduction to .NET’s Latest Innovations

Microsoft Build 2024 was packed with announcements, but none more exciting than the updates to the .NET ecosystem. From performance improvements to new AI integrations, .NET is steering towards becoming more powerful, more intuitive, and more omnipresent across platforms than ever before. Let’s break down these developments into easy-to-digest categories and explore what’s new and what’s improved.

.NET 9 and Performance Enhancements

Microsoft unleashed .NET 9 Preview 4 just in time for Build 2024. This latest iteration emphasizes performance, with reduced application sizes, optimized memory usage, and faster execution thanks to enhanced loops and exception handling. A standout feature is the new server garbage collector mode designed to significantly cut memory consumption, particularly beneficial for applications running on Kubernetes.

Cross-Platform Support

Continuing its commitment to cross-platform utility, .NET extends its reach by ensuring all necessary packages are easily installable on Linux and maintained with timely security updates. This ensures developers can leverage .NET’s capabilities across diverse environments seamlessly.

AI Integration in .NET

AI takes center stage at Build 2024, with .NET introducing an array of AI-powered capabilities and tools:

.NET AI Samples Repository

Explore a new GitHub repository loaded with AI sample projects. These are designed to inspire and guide developers in integrating AI into their applications, providing a practical resource to jumpstart AI-powered innovations.

Semantic Kernel Updates

A push for enhanced integration with AI tools continues with Semantic Kernel. This SDK simplifies how developers orchestrate code and AI services, boosting the collaborative potential between human-coded logic and AI-driven automation.

Partnership with OpenAI

Anticipation is building around .NET’s upcoming OpenAI library, born from a direct partnership with OpenAI. Though details are still forthcoming, this collaboration promises to unlock new AI functionalities within the .NET ecosystem.

Launch of .NET Aspire: A Cloud-Native Stack

One of the highlights of Build 2024 is the transition of .NET Aspire from preview to general availability. .NET Aspire is geared toward building observable, production-ready, distributed applications with ease. It brings a slew of features aimed at improving orchestration, service discovery, deployment, and monitoring. This opens up new vistas for developers working with complex, multi-service cloud environments.

Advances in ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core receives a robust set of updates:

Built-in Open API Support

Moving away from reliance on external packages like Swagger, ASP.NET Core now includes native support for Open API documentation generation, facilitating easier and more integrated API management.

Enhanced Caching Capabilities

The introduction of a new hybrid cache API expands upon existing distributed caching mechanisms. This improved framework supports multi-tier storage and offers better control over cache management, optimizing data accessibility and efficiency.

Blazor Updates

For Blazor enthusiasts, Microsoft introduces constructor injection for Blazor components and enables WebSocket compression by default, enhancing the framework’s interactivity and performance. Additionally, developers can now enforce static rendering selectively, allowing for optimized rendering strategies per page requirements.

C# 13 Innovations

Focusing on the language at the core of .NET, C# 13 introduces enhancements like extended support for params collections beyond just arrays. More excitingly, the upcoming ‘extension types’ feature will allow developers to extend the capabilities of types more comprehensively, paving the way for more modular and maintainable code.

Conclusion: .NET Moves Forward

Microsoft Build 2024 has set a thrilling pace for the development of .NET, pushing bounds in performance, cross-platform functionality, and AI integration. As the platform evolves, it continues to offer developers an unmatched toolkit for building modern, efficient, and intelligent applications. Stay tuned by subscribing, and don’t forget to share your thoughts and favorite features in the comments!

Thank you for tuning in to our rapid overview of .NET at Microsoft Build 2024. Here’s to building powerful applications with the latest tools at our disposal!

[h3]Watch this video for the full details:[/h3]


There’s an overwhelming amount of information at Microsoft Build 2024 – everything from AI updates to the .NET Aspire release to new platform features. In this video, we’ll quickly explore the key announcements you need to know about for .NET 8.0 and 9.0. This is not a deep dive into any single feature, but rather an overview of everything you should be aware of to stay in the loop and dive into later. In future videos, we’ll dive into these topics in more depth – so remember to subscribe!

.NET Build 2024 Blog Post and Site
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/dotnet-build-2024-announcements/
https://build.microsoft.com/

Performance dashboard:
https://msit.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYTZjMTk3YjEtMzQ3Yi00NTI5LTg5ZDItNmUyMGRlOTkwMGRlIiwidCI6IjcyZjk4OGJmLTg2ZjEtNDFhZi05MWFiLTJkN2NkMDExZGI0NyIsImMiOjV9

.NET Aspire GA details:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/dotnet-aspire-general-availability/

AI Samples:
https://github.com/dotnet/ai-samples

My related videos:

Learn to code a simple AI powered app: https://youtu.be/HzgqgA2qv-I

Learn to use AI to chat with your own data: https://youtu.be/OdpqciXDKjY

Learn Azure OpenAI fundamentals: https://youtu.be/c66y0W5KFVY

Learn how to authenticate to Azure OpenAI the RIGHT way: https://youtu.be/keIs_bpgdXs

[h3]Transcript[/h3]
welcome back to the code wolf today we’re going to recap some keynet announcements from build 2024 as fast as possible this video is intended purely as a rapid fire overview of what’s going on with net just to keep you in the loop of things so make sure to also check the description below for plenty of links to more detailed resources however I’ll also of course follow up with deeper dive videos on many of these topics so make sure to subscribe to not miss out the channel is almost at the 2500 subscriber Milestone so please help make it happen with this video and leave a comment about what feature or topic you’re most interested in let’s build now the updates foret build can be Loosely organized into five categories which are the overall net platform obviously AI net Aspire asp.net core and C13 so let’s start at the top with theet platform net 9 preview 4 was officially released in time for build so you can install it now you’ll have to have this latest version installed to access some of the new capabilities that we’ll cover in this video Microsoft reiterated that performance is a major Focus for this release across the framework container and Native aot app sizes are smaller memory usage is optimized exceptions and loop performance are improved and plenty more the memory usage in particular is improved by a new server garbage collector mode that can dramatically reduce memory usage in certain scenarios including potentially huge improvements for apps running on kubernetes Microsoft also continues to invest time and effort into making sure that net runs crossplatform for example net packages are available to install on Linux from official feeds and are updated for security patches on the same schedule as Microsoft for instance you can install net 8 on Ubuntu by running the command pseudo apt install.net 8 AI is undoubtedly the primary focus at build 2024 and net has received plenty of updates here one of my personal new favorite updates is the new net AI samples GitHub repo which provides all sorts of demo projects for different AI scenarios you can check these out and build off of them to implement similar scenarios in your own apps next we have the general push for sem antic kernel which isn’t new at build but it continues to receive updates and attention for obvious reasons semantic kernel is an open source SDK that allows you to orchestrate your existing code and its connections with AI services and tools more easily there are new features to streamline building plugins assistance and other Integrations in your code I’m planning to dive into this cool tool set in an upcoming video net will also receive its own dedicated open AI library in Partnership directly with the open AI company this isn’t available yet but it should be very soon so we’ll look at this more when it’s released finally asp.net core is introducing AI powered smart components such as smart paste Smart Text area and smart combo box these components are built into the framework and provide some very basic AI or smart functionality such as extracting data structures from pasted text they’ll be interesting to see where this idea goes over time now perhaps the most significant announcement foret at build is the general availability release of net Aspire that’s right it’s no longer in preview net Aspire is a cloud native stack for building observable production ready distributed apps the main building blocks of this stack are as follows orchestration allows you to manage the configurations and connections between the different resources and services that your app is composed of components are Nate package is designed to simplify connections to different platforms and services such as reddis or Azure storage service Discovery streamlines communication between the different Services of your app so you don’t have to manually manage concerns such as URL addresses of individual resources across different environments deployment features streamline the process of taking multi-resource apps to the cloud and last but not least the net Aspire dashboard offers powerful app monitoring and inspection tools such as the ability to view logs traces and environment settings in real time asp.net core also includes some updates with this new preview release most notably asp.net core now has built-in support for open API document generation at build or runtime this is no longer a default dependency on the Swagger packages we’ve used in the past but it’s still just as easy to set up using only two lines of code a new hybrid cache API has also been introduced to improve distributed caching support this new service expands the I distributed cache support with new capabilities such as multi-tier storage and improved management over what’s stored in L1 or L2 caches on the Blazer side of things we now have Constructor injection with blazer components which is a welcome addition that I’ve personally been hoping to see for a while websocket compression is now enabled by default to further improve interactive server rendering performance you can also now Force static rendering for globally interactive apps in other words you can set up your app to use interactive server or web assembly globally but then pick and choose which Pages still render with static serers side rendering and for our final category there’s a couple interesting improvements to C that are worth mentioning starting in C 13 pams now supports additional options Beyond just arrays such as list of type te span of type te and I innumerable of type t c will also soon receive a big new feature called extension types though they aren’t quite available yet in preview 4 extension types basically take the concept of extension methods even further they allow you to supply extension members for an underlying type which means they can have methods properties and apply to a specific instance or an entire type this topic is beyond the scope of this video and not available for demo yet but I’ll try to create some content around this when it’s released remember to subscribe to stay up to date on these items thanks so much for watching leave a comment with your thoughts and I’ll see you next time right here at the code wolf