What's new in .NET?
At Webigence we are a team of web development specialists using ASP.NET to code sophisticated applications for a variety of clients across a diverse range of companies. See some examples of our work at https://www.webigence.com/case-studies.
What is .NET?
.NET is the framework used to develop, run and deploy applications and web services. ASP.NET is an open-source server-side set of libraries for building web applications and dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to use a full featured programming language such as C# (pronounced C-Sharp) or VB.NET to build dynamic web sites, enterprise-class web applications and web services.
The Microsoft website Channel 9 is a very good place to find out what is new in the world of Microsoft ASP.NET.
So here is a summary of the most recent news at the start of 2017.
.NET Core 1.1 and .NET Core Tools 1.0
.NET Core 1.0.4 and .NET Core 1.1.1 were released 7th March 2017, for Windows, macOS, Linux and Docker. Both releases include a set of reliability updates to improve the quality of .NET Core.
Also newly released the .NET Core Tools 1.0 which is integrated into Visual Studio 2017 and is supported on;
- Windows Server 2016
- Linux Mint 18
- OpenSUSE 42.1
- macOS 10.12
You can download the new .NET Core tools at .NET Core Downloads, for development at the command-line or with VS Code.
Launch of Visual Studio 2017
You can download Visual Studio 2017 https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/whatsnew/ here. Microsoft are committing to
“delivering updates across the Visual Studio product family, and adding new value for Visual Studio subscribers and Visual Studio Dev Essentials members”.
Microsoft have streamlined the cloud development, provided integration with all .NET Core, Azure applications, microservices, Docker containers, and more. They’ve done updates for Mac Preview 4, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Mobile Center preview.
F# updates
Support for F# on .NET Core 1.0-1.1 and .NET Standard 1.6. Is being previewed alongside the release of Visual Studio 2017, but it is not supported for .NET Core Visual Studio tooling. However, you can
“create an F# application on .NET Core via dotnet new in the .NET CLI, have it run on all platforms, and create NuGet packages based on .NET Standard 1.6”.
For a quick Video update, watch Kendra Havens, a Programme Manager on the .NET team, explain the recent news. 
Blog written by Natalie Wiggins