.NET Core is a managed framework that is optimized for building console, cloud, ASP.NET Core, and UWP applications. It provides an implementation of .NET Standard for the Base Class Libraries.

Building on the rapid growth in the refactored and reinvigorated .NET Core, Microsoft aims to have many existing .NET Framework 4.8 APIs and features run on .NET 5, along with new APIs and services.

Microsoft said that going forward, ASP.NET Core will only run on the NET Core 3.0 platform, not the traditional 16-year-old .NET Framework.

Microsoft shipped the first release candidates for its .NET 8 offerings, including the main framework, the .NET MAUI evolution of Xamarin.Forms and the ASP.NET Core web-dev components, not to mention ...

But that growth has led to a new set of questions: Which .Net should I be using—.Net Framework, .Net Standard, Xamarin’s Mono (and the closely related Unity 3D gaming tools), or .Net Core?

The .NET framework allows cross-platform development on Windows and Mac, and Microsoft released version 8 for both in November. Here's what that means to developers.