Latest .NET 6 features offer "massive" performance improvements and native support for Apple Silicon and improved support for Arm64.

This blog discusses the most important .NET 6 features you should know to land a job. Latest .NET 6 features include C# 10, which improves code speed.

Important .NET 6 Features to Land the Best Jobs

WebAssembly support has been improved, with application programming interfaces (APIs) for HTTP/3, JSON processing, math, and direct memory manipulation added. .NET 6 will have free support for three years. Microsoft stated that developers had already begun upgrading their applications to it.

According to an RC2 newsletter, planned .NET 6 features include C# 10, which allows the development of new features, including records and patterns. Global using directives and file-scoped namespaces are also included in C# 10, which help developers simplify code and write less boilerplate. Record structs are comparable to class-based records in C# 9. However, there are certain distinctions, such as record structs being added for completeness so structs can have the same record benefits as classes. The file-scoped namespace declarations feature in C# 10 is designed to reduce indentation and line count.

In an October 12, 2021 bulletin for the second release candidate, new .NET features were included:

With the release of RC1, the  .NET core SDK was changed to include new features:. Async Main, top-level statements, target-typed new expressions, global using directives, file-scoped namespaces, and nullable reference types are used in new C# project templates.

MacOS and Windows Arm64 support is nearly complete. By installing Arm64 and x64 builds to various locations, .NET 6 RC2 enables Arm64 + x64 coexistence. To use .NET 6 RC2 or later, developers must uninstall all previous versions of the framework and start again on MacOS and Windows Arm64 PCs.

.NET 6 is expected to enhance cloud, desktop, and mobile app performance. It will incorporate capabilities from the Xamarin open-source mobile .NET platform for Android, iOS, and MacOS.

Microsoft is also expanding its Blazor client web app development tool to allow developers to create hybrid client apps that integrate web and native UIs for desktop and mobile use. The first unified platform deliverable in .NET 5 was Blazor WebAssembly. When .NET 6.0 was released in November 2020, it had new .NET 6 features, which was the start of unification and established the framework for Xamarin developers to adopt the unified .NET platform.

The .NET unification combines the technologies of .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Xamarin/Mono into a single .NET. Parts of the .NET Framework had already been transferred to .NET Core, and .NET 5 marked the beginning of the path of combining .NET Core and Mono/Xamarin on a single base class library and toolchain.

Microsoft dot NET 6 RC1 was released on September 14, 2021, after seven preview .NET framework version history. Microsoft discussed basic .NET 6 features in a bulletin on the RC:

Source build is a scenario and infrastructure developed with Red Hat to meet the packaging requirements of popular Linux distributions like Debian and Fedora. Source build is also designed to allow .NET Core contributors to create a .NET Core software development kit (SDK) with coordinated modifications across various repositories. The technique is designed to address typical issues that developers face when building the entire .NET Core SDK from source code.

Profile-guided optimization (PGO), one of the .NET 6 features, is based on the notion that startup code is often homogeneous and that better performance levels can be achieved by utilizing it. PGO can improve the quality of startup code, reduce binary size, and rearrange program binaries so that startup code is towards the beginning of the file.

Dynamic PGO is a clone of PGO that works with the RyuJIT.NET just-in-time compiler. The integration of dynamic PGO using RyuJIT.NET provides better optimizations, improved code generation, robust design implementation, and support for numerouss code generation targets.

HTTP/3, previewed in .NET 6, addresses functional and performance issues with previous HTTP versions.

CrossGen 2, for pre-compilation ahead of time.

Intel Control Enforcement Technology (CET) is a new Intel and AMD processor feature protecting against common control-flow hijacking attacks.

WX is security mitigation that prevents memory pages from being both readable and executable at the same time.

Preview 7, released on August 2021, refined many .NET 6 features before RC1. Preview number seven included:

Reflection APIs providing nullability information was highlighted in the libraries.

A .NET 7 early preview feature is generic math.

A library feature is native memory allocation APIs.

System.Text.Json provides serialization alerts and System.Text.Json property ordering. Both are elements of the library.

For cryptographic activities, there are simpler call patterns for libraries.

Preview 6, which was revealed on July 2021, highlighted .NET 6 features such as:

Workload enhancements with the .NET SDK are optional.

Sync-over-async performance has improved.

Preview 5, which was issued on June 2021, listed the following .NET 6 features:

SDK workloads, which are part of the .NET unification concept, allow for additional application types like mobile and WebAssembly to be supported without raising the SDK's size. The functionality has been extended to include list and update verbs. The dotnetworkload list capability informs developers of which workloads have been installed and the dotnet workload update feature updates all installed workloads to the most recent version available. SDK workloads were introduced in Preview 4 as a package manager.

NuGet library developers can use package validation tools to ensure that their packages are consistent and well-formed.

The Roslyn compiler platform now has more analyzers.

Custom guards are enabled for the Platform Compatibility analyzer in the SDK.

The APIs for extensions have been enhanced, with a focus on hosting and dependency injection.

The quantity of data communicated over a network is reduced with WebSocket compression for libraries.

Support for previous frameworks, such as the .NET Framework 4.6.1, .NET Core 3.1, and .NET Standard 2.0, is being phased down.

In .NET 6, a source generator is included with text.json to speed up a startup, increase throughput, and reduce private memory usage.

A new .NET API for Objective-C interop allows for a consistent experience across runtimes.

Support for the OpenTelemetry Metrics API has been added. Observability is promoted through OpenTelemetry, which is supported in recent .NET versions.

On Linux, OpenSSL 3 support has been implemented for cryptography.

With full .NET features and experiences, Preview 4 was released on May 2021, laying the groundwork for the final .NET 6 build. In August, "go live" builds, which are supported in production, are expected.

Microsoft highlighted eight themes for .NET 6 in their bulletin on Preview 4:

New developers and students will find it appealing.

A fantastic client development opportunity.

Being acknowledged as a powerful platform for developing cloud native applications.

Providing simpler and more reliable models for using .NET with mission-critical projects, as well as catering more closely to the demands of major commercial and government customers.

Improving "inner loop" speed for .NET developers, including build performance, hot restart, and hot reload productivity.

Increasing the confidence, quality, and support of the .NET ecosystem.

Using runtime execution information to improve startup and throughput.

Preview 4 includes the following new features of .NET 6 framework:

Hot Reload has been improved, allowing users to make changes to source code while the app is running without pausing it or hitting a breakpoint. Developer output has increased. Hot Reload now works on top of the CoreCLR runtime for a variety of programs, including WPF, Windows Forms, WinUI, ASP.NET, Console Apps, and other frameworks. At a later date, the technique will be extended to WebAssembly, iOS, and Android apps that run on Mono.

IAsyncEnumerable now supports Text.Json, enabling System.

IAsyncEnumerableT> objects for Text.Json (de)serialization. System. IAsyncEnumerableT> objects can now be serialized as JSON arrays with Text.Json.

The writeable JSON DOM feature for Text.Json is a simple and high-performance programming model that provides an API to bypass serialization complexity and the usual expense of a DOM.

On Windows, FileStream speed has been improved.

Source-generates performant logging APIs with the LoggerMessageAttribute type.

Support for dates, times, and time zones has been improved.

Warnings are enabled by default for IL (intermediate language) cutting. Trim warnings alert developers to areas where trimming could result in the removal of code that is needed at runtime.

Improvements to single-file application publication, including better analysis to enable custom warnings.

Compression is now available for single-file bundles.

Version checking for the SDK is included.

When publishing ReadyToRun images, Crossgen2, which generates and optimizes code via ahead-of-time compilation, is now enabled by default.

The following .NET 6 features and improvements were included in Preview 3, which was released on April 8 2021:

CollectionsMarshal.GetValueRef, a new unsafe API, makes updating struct values in dictionaries faster. This API is designed for high-speed scenarios.

The performance of interface casting has been enhanced by 16% to 38%, which is very advantageous for C# pattern matching to and between interfaces.

Multiple modifications have been made to RyuJIT's code generation to make the process more efficient and the final code run faster.

ASP.NET Core and Blazor projects utilizing dotnet watch now have early support for .NET Hot Reload. This was the first step in a larger strategy to make this technology available to all .NET developers, including support for desktop development, cross-platform client scenarios in .NET MAUI (Multiplatform App UI), and more.

Microsoft's bulletin on Preview 2 also stressed platform themes like enhancing "inner loop" efficiency, or streamlining the tools and procedures used by developers to update, create, and test their code on a regular basis. Hot reloads, for example, will boost developer productivity by allowing code to be updated while an app is running without the need for a debugger. The inner loops theme is also focusing on runtime startup efficiency, application models, the dotnet CLI, and MSBuild.

Improved client app development, including a more cohesive mobile product for .NET, is another theme. iOS, Android, and MacOS development will be integrated into the .NET SDK experience and will use .NET libraries as part of this endeavor. Furthermore, the Xamarin.Forms cross-UI framework will evolve into .NET MAUI, allowing developers to create apps for Android, Windows, and MacOS from the same codebase. .NET MAUI will allow Blazor programs to run natively on Windows and MacOS.

Microsoft also highlighted the inclusion of APIs and improvements to .NET libraries. For example, when serializing an object graph, JsonSerializer (System.Tex.Json) now offers the ability to disregard cycles, and PriorityQueueTElement.TPriority> is a new collection that allows the addition of new items with a value and a priority. Preview 2 also improved standard numeric format processing and runtime and JIT performance.

Android and iOS were the first two platforms supported in MAUI in Preview 1, which was released on February 17. MacOS and Windows desktop support will be included in future previews.

.NET features update

The foundation laid by .NET 6—which offers a single set of base libraries, runtime, and SDK, a streamlined development environment, and increased developer productivity—is expanded upon by .NET 7. Improved support for cloud native scenarios, tools to make it simpler to upgrade legacy projects, and streamlining the developer experience by making it easier to work with containers are some of the key areas of focus for .NET 7.

The Preview 1 release now includes the following features.

.NET 7 features

They have made progress on noting the nullability of the Microsoft.Extensions.* libraries. The following libraries have had their nullability noted in .NET 7 Preview 1:

Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions

Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Abstractions

Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Abstractions

Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Physical

Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Binder

Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.CommandLine

Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.EnvironmentVariables

Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.FileExtensions

Annotations that are nullable for Microsoft.Extensions

To ActivityContext, the overload is added.

When using TryParse, you can parse and create an ActivityContext object even if the activity context came from a distant parent (related issue).
To indicate whether the Activity object is halted, add the method Activity.IsStopped() (related issue).

Observability

CodeGen

InitBlkUnroll/CopyBlkUnroll should use SIMD operations, and the unroll limit should be increased to 128 bytes

[Arm64] Continue unrolling InitBlock and CopyBlock up to 128 bytes using ARM64 confinement optimizations Vector64.Zero/Vector128.Zero

Arm64

Generalize the construction of loop pre-headers and loop hoisting

Improvements to the loop refactoring and comments

Loop optimizations

Accelerate the development of more hardware intrinsics across platforms

Narrow and Widen implementation using SIMDAsHWIntrinsic

Enhance "str == """ with StartsWith(‘c’) and add the IsKnownConstant jit helper.

Permit JIT to maintain HFA and HVA in the registers when returning or giving them as arguments

Activate nint/nuint support for Vector64/128/256

Adding X86Base and ArmBase and Pause() support.Yield()

Use the PAL's preferred region for JIT relocation suggestions.

On x64, permit contained indirections in tailcalls.

Improve indirection cell call sequence optimization more broadly

Refrain from creating new locals just to invoke delegate

General optimizations

They have started changing the runtime libraries to use the p/invoke source generator that was prototyped in .NET 6 since it was included into dotnet/runtime. This indicates that the transformed p/invokes are AOT-compatible and do not need to construct an IL stub at runtime.

The p/invoke source generator will eventually be made usable outside of the runtime.

Interoperation: p/Invoke code generation

In C# hot reload for Blazor WebAssembly and .NET for iOS and Android (related problem), the following edits are now permitted:

Static lambdas are added to existing methods.
Adding this-capturing lambdas to existing methods that already include this-capturing lambdas
Giving existing classes new static or non-virtual instance methods
Updating existing classes with additional static fields
Developing new courses

Classes that have just been added do not support instance fields.
Existing or new classes' newly introduced methods and fields are not visible to reflection.

Now, it's time for you to utilize this framework to build a fantastic career. Keep yourself updated with the Microsoft .NET framework latest version and master it. And apply for remote .NET developer jobs at trusted platforms like Turing.

Improvements to hot reload

Microsoft launched a production release of its .NET 6 software development platform after more than a year of development by the .NET team. .NET 6 was released on November 8, 2021, and can be downloaded from dotnet.microsoft.com. According to a bulletin on the production release, new .NET 6 features offer "massive" performance improvements and native support for Apple Silicon and improved support for Arm64.

Latest .NET 6 features also include C# 10, which improves code speed and expressiveness. F# 6, another feature improves performance, ease of use, and uniformity. There is a dynamic, profile-guided optimization system that delivers runtime optimizations. Improved cloud diagnostics via the dotnet-monitor tool and support for the OpenTelemetry standard for observability telemetry are also good features.

Doesn’t that sound exciting? Let’s get into more detail about .NET features in the next section.

Released in 2021, .NET 6 is the newest version of .NET Core that comes along with the set of latest APIs language features, and performance improvements.

.NET 6 offers a variety of benefits like allowing developers to simplify development cycles while also reduce the time required. The technology is widely used for creating server-based applications for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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Important .NET 6 Features to Land the Best Jobs

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Anaswara Ramachandran

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