ASP.NET Core has become one of the most powerful frameworks for building modern web applications. With its cross-platform capabilities, blazing performance, and rich ecosystem, it's my "goto" for anything medium to large scale.
Why ASP.NET Core?
The framework has several advantages:
- Performance: Ranks among the fastest web frameworks in benchmarks
- Cross-platform: Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Open source: Active community and transparent development
- Flexible hosting: Self-hosted, IIS, Docker, or cloud-native
- Blazor is essentially writing javascript in C#
Getting Started
Setting up a new ASP.NET Core project is quick and easy with the .NET CLI. The framework has templates for everything from simple APIs to full MVC applications with Razor Pages.
Key Features
Minimal APIs
For lightweight services, minimal APIs let you define endpoints with minimal boilerplate. Perfect for microservices and simple backends.
Razor Pages
Server-side rendering with a clean page-focused model. Great for content-heavy sites and traditional web applications.
Blazor
Build interactive web UIs using C# instead of JavaScript. Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly give you options for how that interactivity is delivered.
Entity Framework Core
A modern object-relational mapper that makes database access simple and intuitive.
My Experience
I've been using ASP.NET/Core for over a decade now, and it continues to impress. The framework has evolved rapidly while maintaining backward compatibility. The tooling in Visual Studio and VS Code is excellent, and the community is helpful.