.NET 5

Microsoft's .NET 5 developer platform, key to the company's work to unify its different .NET flavors, is generally available as of yesterday, November 10.

In 2019, Microsoft announced that .NET 5 would be its first major deliverable on the road toward unifying .NET.  Ref: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/

.NET 5 includes C# 9, F# 5, and the corresponding ASP.NET Core release. Microsoft is encouraging developers to use new application programming interfaces (APIs) in .NET 5 to integrate with other tools like its Power Platform low-code/no-code platform. It also provides native (not just emulated) support for Windows Arm64, as well as performance improvements in the .NET libraries and Garbage Collector; smaller container images; and single-file applications.

We knew that Microsoft adopted open source strategy for last 3+ years using .NET Core  .NET 5 is the next step forward with .NET Core. The project aims to improve .NET in a few key ways:

1. Produce a single .NET runtime and framework that can be used everywhere and that has uniform runtime behaviors and developer experiences.
2. Expand the capabilities of .NET by taking the best of .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin and Mono.
3. Build that product out of a single code-base that developers (Microsoft and the community) can work on and expand together and that improves all scenarios.

Feel free to download and enjoy .NET 5 at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/5.0

More fun to come with the attached product roadmap from Microsoft.  As of now, they're on track. Kudos to their great effort !