Microsoft is coming out with a bunch of new features that make me very glad to be a .NET-oriented developer. The ASP.NET vNext platform looks like it is going to be a solid improvement to the environment; no longer will users be tied to IIS or Visual Studio and I anticipate some strong VS competitors coming out with these additions and the official support of Mono. Additionally, the C# 6.0 features are going to make some small changes that will make big impacts.
Roslyn
Roslyn is an open-source .NET compiler platform that will be allowing a ton of language updates that will be coming around with C# 6.0. Since it is also cross-platform, can run using Mono (the open-source implementation of .NET), and will be working side-by-side with the self-server ASP.NET offers, running a .NET web app on a Linux or Mac server is reasonably possible.
Language Change: Null propagation operator
This change adds the operator ‘?.’ in place of ‘.’ to access properties that could possibly be null. So for example, instead of doing this:
if (person != null && person.Address != null && person.Address.City != null) { … }you can simply do…
if (person?.Address?.City != null) { … }Since I use Entity Framework relationships a lot, I am really excited about this feature. I am tired of writing null check and null check…
Language Change: Primary constructors and Auto-property initializers
These two features will allow you to setup basic class construction simpler than before. So for example, when we currently do the following:
public class Person {
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public Address Address { get; set; }
public Person(string firstName, string lastName) {
FirstName = firstName;
LastName = lastName;
}
public Person(string firstName, string lastName, string city, string state) {
FirstName = firstName;
LastName = lastName;
Address = new Address(city, state);
}
}Instead, you can do this now:
public class Person(string firstName, string lastName) {
public string FirstName { get; set; } = firstName;
public string LastName { get; set; } = lastName;
public Address Address { get; set; }
public Person(string city, string state) : this(firstName, lastName) {
Address = new Address(city, state);
}
}RyuJIT
RyuJIT is a just-in-time compiler that will allow developers to no longer have to stop debugging and re-build; instead, you simply save and refresh. At last, the workflow I love with dynamic languages like Python and PHP (though it already exists with Java, such as in Java Play) is now in ASP.NET. Stopping and rebuilding is, what, a 3 second process? That happens constantly, and builds up to plenty of time and blown concentration.
Self-hosting Applications
No longer are ASP.NET applications confined to IIS and Windows Servers. Now, ASP.NET MVC has a self-hosting tool. This is done using a new Startup.cs file, and will boot up the service:
using Microsoft.AspNet.Routing;
using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder;
using Microsoft.Framework.DependencyInjection;
public class Startup
{
public void Configure(IBuilder app)
{
app.UseServices(services =>
{
services.AddMvc();
});
app.UseMvc(routes =>
{
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
});
}
}There are a ton of more features in the new ASP.NET MVC framework and C# language that will make developers (well, me, anyways) much more productive.
