HISTORY OF DEV

September 23, 2019

.NET Core 3.0 and C# 8 released

MicrosoftThe software giant behind Windows, Office, Azure, and Xbox — founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. shipped .NET Core 3.0 on September 23, 2019 with C# 8 — adding nullable reference types, async streams, ranges, and Windows desktop support.

What it was for

.NETC# 8's nullable annotations (`string?`) caught null bugs at compile time; `IAsyncEnumerable` enabled streaming async data; index/range syntax (`^1`, `..`) simplified slicing. .NET Core 3.0 also brought WPF and WinForms to .NET Core on Windows.

Companies

  • Microsoft

Why it's here

C# 8 nullable types changed how .NET teams handle null safety at scale.

Why it mattered

Desktop support on Core let Windows apps migrate off .NET FrameworkMicrosoft's original managed runtime for Windows — CLR, BCL, and WinForms/ASP.NET stacks..

What it solved

NullReferenceException was the #1 .NET runtime bug; Framework-only desktop apps could not move to Core.

Media

  • .NET
    Image.NET

    Microsoft, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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