.NET 5
.NET 5 is a cross-platform, open-source development platform for building modern applications, including web, mobile, desktop, cloud, and IoT. It unified the previously separate .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Xamarin into a single platform, offering improved performance, simplified deployment, and a consistent API surface. It serves as a foundation for building applications with languages like C#, F#, and Visual Basic.
Developers should learn .NET 5 to create high-performance, scalable applications that run on Windows, Linux, and macOS, leveraging its unified ecosystem for web APIs with ASP.NET Core, desktop apps with WinForms or WPF, and cloud-native development. It is ideal for enterprise solutions, microservices architectures, and cross-platform projects where productivity and modern tooling are priorities, especially as it paved the way for the long-term support version, .NET 6.