Summary

We started with a history lesson to enable you to understand where .NET Core came from, enabling you to share context with seasoned .NET developers, and have a common understanding of the .NET landscape. It has been a long ride, with the occasional sidetrack and the odd confusing naming here and there. The closing of this part showed how things have been simplified, and how Microsoft is still working to make the .NET story more comprehensible for developers – juniors and seniors alike.

We also went through a basic web app to refresh your C# skills. The focus was mainly on showing the different components that make up an MVC-patterned web app and did not go extensively into generic programming skills. If you struggled with this part, you might want to go through a tutorial on the C# language before returning to this book.

We introduced a range of new things while learning what's new in the .NET Core framework and version 9 of C#. This was a high-level view and introduced the features that will be covered in greater detail in later chapters.

Since this book is about creating web applications, we covered some web server-specific details to give background that will be useful both later in the book and in real life.

The chapter was wrapped up by showing off some tools and utilities that are recommended for your programming tool belt. Remember, the more tools in your belt, the more opportunities you'll have in your career!

In the next chapter, we will cover the cross-platform story for .NET 5. This includes getting started with .NET both on Linux and macOS as well as explaining some of the concepts around cross-platform support.