.NET 6 Is Here: Here’s How It’s Going To Take .NET Functionality Up a Notch

After a year’s worth of development efforts, .NET 6 is finally here!

The new version of the .NET software development platform was released on November 08, 2021, and has fulfilled the tech giant’s plan to unify the .NET Core and .NET Framework.

.NET 6 is packed with many exciting new features, making it the fastest .NET release yet.

Let’s take a look at some of its most promising features that can help you enhance your platform’s development, usability, and performance.

Top New Features of .NET 6

Microsoft has released .NET 6 with long-term stable support of 3 years. The version includes around ten thousand git commits and is the first-ever release with native support for Apple Silicon and better support for Windows Arm 64. It features C# 10 for faster coding and F# 6 for improved performance.

Here are some of its major updates in detail.

1. Compile-Time Source Generator

   The source generators create c# source files that can be compiled as part of the library or software build. .NET 6 has introduced a new source generator at compile time as part of System.Text.Json. This will eliminate the runtime use of System.Reflection and System.Reflection.Emit and cut down the start-up time.

2. WebSocket Compression

   WebSocket is a full-duplex and bi-directional communication protocol that supports data transfer between the client and server. Compressing this data helps in decreasing the communication bandwidth. .NET 6 has enabled WebSocket compression using the per-message-deflate extension for WebSockets that compresses the message payloads with the help of the DEFLATE algorithm.

3. SOCKS Proxy Protocol

   SOCKS, short for Sockets Secure, is a network protocol that facilitates the transmission of network packets between the client and the actual server via a proxy server. SOCKS proxies have been long in existence but were never supported by .NET. However, this ends with .NET 6 as the version offers exclusive support to SOCKS proxies.

4. Dynamic Profile Guided Optimization (PGO)

   PGO is a native compilation technology that helps you create a highly optimized code. It can compile startup code at higher quality, re-arrange application binary, and reduce binary size. .NET 6 has come up with a dynamic PGO which is a mirror image of PGO integrated with RyuJIT that helps improve performance by runtime information for smaller binaries and speedier startup.

5. NuGet Package Validation Tool

   .NET 6 offers a package validation tool to NuGet library developers that enables them to validate the consistency of their packages. The tool helps them check if there are any breaking changes across versions, whether the package has the same set of public APIs for all runtime specific implementations, and if there are any applicability gaps in the target framework.

6. SDK Workloads

   Microsoft has added SDK workload in .NET 6 that supports new kinds of applications like WebAssembly and mobile without enhancing the SDK size. With this feature, you can install only the SDKs you want instead of the ‘all-in-one’ package. Moreover, it is also supported with CLI workloads.

Why Upgrade to .NET 6?

Every software development platform must be maintained, managed, and updated regularly for optimal performance, and .NET is no different. According to the Microsoft lifecycle policy, .NET 5 will reach the end of life on May 08, 2022.

So, if you don’t want your soon-to-be outdated .NET version to hinder your platform’s functionalities and expose it to numerous security threats, you must upgrade to .NET 6. Besides some latest features, it offers many useful benefits to businesses including-

Unified Platform Support
.NET 6 comes with .NET Multi-Platform App UPI that serves as a cross-platform framework for developing native mobile and desktop applications compatible with Android, iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and Windows.

New Project Templates
.NET 6 brings a plethora of new templates based on the changes brought by C# 10. These templates are quite minimalistic and straightforward, allowing developers to simplify the complicated bits of code into one-liners.

Advanced Security
.NET 6 has added preview support for runtime defense-in-depth and the security has been improved for OpenSSL 3 and ChaCha20Poly1305 authenticated encryption schemes.

Enhanced Performance
Apart from improvements across the board and file I/O, .NET 6 offers enhanced speed and efficiency for both JIT and AOT compilation. This helps decrease project execution time, improve latency time, and optimize memory usage.

Minimal APIs
.NET 6 supports the minimal APIs introduced in ASP.NET to improve the performance of HTTP services. They hook into ASP.NET Core’s hosting and routing capabilities to allow developers to build APIs with only minimum lines of code.

Final Notes

The new and improved .NET 6 brings a lot to the table. With its help, you will not only be able to enhance your platform’s development and performance but also make your applications more robust, user-friendly, and scalable.

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