What the launch of .NET 8 means to an up-and-coming developer

.NET 8, the successor to .NET 7, is due to be released as a long-term support (LTS) release in November. Our new graduate, .NET developer, Jacob Busby, is looking forward to the release of the latest incarnation of the ‘most-loved framework’, according to Stack Overflow, due to its many performance improvements and new features. 

Here he gives an overview of five key changes he anticipates will have the biggest impact on his role as a junior developer from November… 

1. New TimeProvider class and ITimer interface will add time abstraction functionality

This will be extremely useful when writing unit testing, easily allowing developers to mock time. It has been possible to mock time in earlier .NET releases, but previously workarounds would be long-winded and complicated. 

2. Capability to adjust the memory limit on the fly

The main benefit of this will be seen in cloud-based services. To be cost-effective, they must be able to scale up and down resource consumption following demand. 

3. The option to simplify the output path and folder structure for build outputs

Previously deep and complex output paths were generated for different build artifacts. The new structure will gather all build outputs into a common location, saving precious development time. 

4. Breaking changes 

With the introduction of the new TimeProvider class and ITimer interface, ISystemClock is being made obsolete. Code that utilises the ISystemClock interface should still work, but updating the code to use the new interface should be considered.

Furthermore, the minimum support baselines for Linux have been updated for .NET 8. .NET is built targeting Ubuntu 16.04, for all architectures. That's primarily important for defining the minimum glibc version for .NET 8. 

.NET 8 will fail to start on distro versions that include an older glibc, such as Ubuntu 14.04 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

5. Performance Improvements

.NET 8 will bring countless performance improvements to applications built using the framework. Check out Stephen Toub’s 80,000-word article documenting all the performance improvements that are set to be introduced in the new release. 

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