In the tech industry, keeping up to date is a never ending pursuit! Having worked as a software engineer for nearly 15 years and in .NET for most of those, I thought I’d document how I keep up to date with latest developments and upcoming features.
LTS
The main thing I’d say, if doing nothing else to keep updated, is making sure you are working on a supported version of .NET.
.NET major releases happen once a year in November and have 2 types:
Short Term Support (STS) and Long Term Support (LTS) - as the names would imply, the LTS versions are supported for a longer period of time and will receive patches for a longer support period. For me, keeping up with these LTS versions every 2 years is key.
You can find more info on the versioning and support policies here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/dotnet-core
.NET blog
The Microsoft “Dev Blogs” are a great source to keep up to date with what's happening across many Microsoft products, particularly .NET. It’ a great mix of high level announcements and deep dives into technical detail depending on what you need.
I use these blogs to keep up to date with the “release candidates” for upcoming major versions. This means by the time a new version is out in November I already know what is new and have maybe even tried it out in advance. The “what’s new in X” are a go to for me in referring back to which features arrived in which version.
See the .NET devblog here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/
.NET Conf
Every year, just as the new version of .NET is being released, there is the virtual conference .NET conf. As the name would imply, it’s for all things .NET! With a mix of talks from those at Microsoft and those in the community. You can sign up to watch along live or catch up with all the talks on YouTube.
YouTube
If you use YouTube regularly to keep up with your favourite content channels, then subscribing to the .NET channel may be a good approach for you. This way the new info makes it’s way to you! Here you will find tutorials, videos from events such as .NET conf as well as a very useful monthly round up of all things .NET.
Something I find really interesting and shows the open source nature of the framework is the weekly community stand up live streams. Check out the “live” tab in the channel and select if you want to be notified of any upcoming events. You can also watch them back later.
Community events
I’d highly recommend finding community events for all areas of tech and .NET is no exception. Hearing what other community members have been building and learning is such a great way to expand your knowledge. I’d recommend having a look on meetup.com for meetups supported by the .NET foundation here: https://www.meetup.com/pro/dotnet/ , where you can find local and online events including the virtual user group: https://www.meetup.com/dotnet-virtual-user-group/
Podcasts
If podcasts are more your thing, there are several for .NET to keep you updated. Including:
I will be honest and say I keep my podcast time for non tech content and for switching off from work. But I do subscribe to these channels for when an episode jumps out at me as something I’d like.
dotnet new templates
When a new major version is out, I like to create a new project using the CLI or Visual Studio templates to see what has changed in the default new project structure. Some versions, very little changes but it's good to keep up to date with the Microsoft default way. On a similar note, after a major version I review the "getting started" level documentation for key features I use (such as WebAPI) to make sure I don't get stuck in the "this is the way I have always done it" mindset when things may have evolved in the tech.
Github
.NET is open source so all is public to see in the Github repo! For folks who have been in industry a while, but don’t work with .NET, I find this still takes them by surprise based on how things used to be. Prior to “.NET core” (now just “.NET” since .NET 5) this wasn’t the case.
Check out the .NET repo Discussions tab https://github.com/dotnet/core/discussions to see whats happening. I’d also recommend looking at the C# repo: https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang
Documentation
Finally, as any developer will ask… “have you read the docs?”The .NET documentation is pretty comprehensive and kept up to date. As a rule if you want to see whats new in a release head to this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/ , by default it will go to the most recent version (9 at the time of writing) and let you know whats new.
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I hope this was useful, everyone has their own preferred way to get news and content, pick what works best for you!