It's great to see .NET 5 so close to release. The blog post announcing, however, has a whiplash moment I just need to note:

So what I'm reading is that the target demographic for .NET 5 RC1 is people who want to use it in production and aren't afraid to encounter critical bugs.

Oh.

Big hits in .NET 5 include C# 9 Records, System.Text.Json (replacement for Newtonsoft.Json)

Ok, terminology pop quiz.

Does "Single File application" mean a single source control file or a single output file?

So to correct the lede, it's a "Self Contained Application", where a single output file is published that contains the runtime, references, and the application code.

There is also a push for "Single File" applications where you can literally write your entire program in one source control file without the ceremony you normally need. the .NET team calls this a "Top Level Statement".

Naming is hard and we as an industry are especially bad at it.

Long story short, target .NET-5.0 if you want cross-platform, and target .NET-5.0-windows if you want Windows specific features.

EFCore PowerTools have been updated for .NET 5 RC 1

It's on Wednesday, October 14, 2020, at 10:00am EDT.

If you're interested in learning more about .NET API Templates, give this webinar a shot. I'm not really sure what they mean by "service" here, whether it's "Micro services" or some other usage, but that's really an us problem.
 Let's retire the name service. That and eliminating timezones is my 2024 campaign platform.

Jerome Hardaway and Michael Brown talk about how hard it is to get developers to embrace .NET

The elephant in this particular room is that the .NET community as a whole isn't seen as welcoming or as a place where new developers should invest their time.

Jerome runs vetswhocode.io and put .NET up for a vote as the next platform to teach, and it was struck down by a vote of 121-1.

Your programming framework is only as relevant as it has new blood. Having new developers unceremoniously dumping .NET says a lot about where people outside the community think we stand.

We can go two ways from here: We can listen, ask questions on how we can improve, and do so; or we can stick our heads in the sand and in 10 years hang out at the "Dumped platforms convention" with Cold Fusion and ActionScript.

.NET Core has re-invigorated the .NET community in a way I wouldn't have thought possible, but unless we act as the ambassadors .NET needs to thrive, we'll lose that momentum.

I'm surprised Rider has made it this long without the Immediate Window. I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against an MVP but it does emphasize a bonus of switching to CalVer: No one knows how old your software is. (For the record, JetBrains rider has been out for 3 years).

The event will take place: Tuesday, October 13th, at 11:30-12:30 Eastern Daylight Time, and it's going to take place via Microsoft Teams. Microsoft is placing a lot of trust on Microsoft Teams, and we'll see how it goes.

This post is a good read if you are new to async in ASP.NET Core Middleware.

And that's it for what happened Last Week in .NET. I'm George Stocker, and I help .NET teams deliver better software faster. If your team feels like it's struggling against the wave of feature requests and roadmap changes, reach out at www.doubleyourproductivity.io.