.NET 6! It's here. This is the biggest release for the .NET framework in years. And it seeps
into every nook and cranny of not just Azure, but also performance, cross-platform and so much more.
I'm Lars Klint, and in this episode of Azure This Week, it's all about this new version of .NET.
I'm going to start with the cloud part of .NET 6 and all the related announcements. And let's begin
with my favorite because it's my show. Azure Functions are now in version 4.0, which means
full support for .NET 6. Azure Functions supports both in-process and isolated, or out-of-process,
execution models as well, which is key for services like durable functions. App services
also now support .NET 6 on both Windows and Linux machines. And you can use ASP.NET Core as well,
and if you're already using a preview of .NET 6 for your app service, no need to panic. The new
runtime version will be picked up automatically when your application is restarted. Azure
static web apps now support full stack. .NET 6 applications by using either Blazor WebAssemblies
or Azure Functions APIs, or both. Kubernetes on Azure is also getting the .NET 6 treatment.
And there are surely many more services to come. .NET 6 is the LTS, long-term support,
version of .NET, which means any service support in the framework will have that version.
Quick break in the .NET 6 news to tell you that if you’d like to learn more
about cloud development with Azure, check out ACG’s free plan. Gives you
access to free courses and quizzes, plus learning paths and original series content.
And you don’t need a credit card to sign up. I’ll include a link in the description.
Performance is one of those elusive goals that when you achieve it,
it immediately moves further away. Now that hasn't stopped the wizards
at Microsoft though. The new version of .NET has so many improvements that the blog post is
eight kilometers long or thereabouts. Now, let me summarize for you though.
The just-in-time JIT compiler has been updated in "an unbelievable number" of ways. Actually, I do
believe that. It has something to do with inlining and devirtualization, which I don't understand
though. The garbage collector implementation has changed from segments to regions, which is
significant in how the memory blocks are sized and used. The throughput for system types, such
as guid, string, random environment, and many, many, many, many more have been vastly improved.
In some cases, the improvement is 90% or more from previous versions of .NET. Collections and
LINQ have also been improved to take the clone methods on lists and dictionaries. It is improved
by 97% from .NET 4.8. Holy moly. And there are so many more, but this is all I have time for.
I mentioned these performance improvements because of course it will all flow into the
Azure apps where use .NET. If you're into the details of performance tuning and improvements,
this Saturn V-sized blog post is worth a read. One of the holy grail moments of
program is reusing code. I used to reuse code between my Windows and Windows phone apps.
Those were the days. I digress. .NET 6 has made great progress in creating a unified platform
that enclose the browser, cloud apps, desktop, IoT and mobile apps. Now this platform makes it
even easier to share .NET 6 between targets. You can write machine learning apps that run in the
browser and look for streaming data anomalies, or use web assembly to run .NET apps right in
the browser. With .NET MAUI, the multi-platform APP UI, you can even write a single project that
creates a similar experience across mobile and desktop. Now, where have I seen that before?
Now these are just a small segment of all the amazing innovations and progress made with .NET
6. It really is a huge deal if you live in the Microsoft developer space. And it's a big deal
for Azure. I encourage you to check out the blog post from Microsoft, and it is really thorough,
and it is really worth going through as well. Now, as we say on the A Cloud Guru team when a
single major announcement takes much more time to go through than there are hours in the day,
but then you remember you can just refer to the blog post itself when you need to,
"Seek, and you shall cloud." So see you next week and keep being awesome Cloud Gurus.