It feels kind of scary committing to .NET 7 right now, when in a year, it will be replaced by yet another major version promising ever increasing performance gains... Or is the difference between major versions not that big?
They are pretty good about backwards compatibility, upgrading .NET Core and .NET hasn't been a big deal so far.
Uh? .NET 6 is the current LTS version. 8 will be the next.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy
I don't comment on Java or Python platform versioning policies because, like you with .NET, "I don't follow the ecosystem closely enough" so I don't have anything meaningful to say about it.
> It feels kind of scary committing to .NET 7 right now .. Or is the difference between major versions not that big?
Rolling forwards, the changes are very minor indeed. And there are utilities to automate parts of the update. e.g. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/upgrade-assistan...
There are of course new things that you will find missing if you're rolling backwards.
I've so rarely seen truly major breaking changes that require substantial effort in updating your own code. Like, the Python 2->3 transition is notable because it's unusual.
ignorance is no problem, I am ignorant of the details of most popular programming languages, and I know that. it's another thing to show awareness of ignorance, and then lose that awareness before the end of the paragraph.
Whatever happened to "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
The path we are on:
Framework 4.x => .NET Core 2.x => .NET Core 3.1 => .NET 6 (we are here today) => .NET 8
The migration from .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 6 was a total non-event. It was substantially harder for us to go from 2.x to 3.1.
Based upon the current proposals and available documentation, we anticipate our migration from .NET6 => .NET8 will occur with absolutely zero ceremony sometime around Q2 2024.
It was a rather big event for Forms, WPF developers, and there are still issues with the designer and 3rd party component libraries, and C++/CLI as well, which happens to be used by them.
Switching between major versions these days is incredibly easy so it's not like you pick a version for life. They're also not changing THAT much.
That's exactly what they do: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/d...
I barely started touching core until core 3, and really started checking out .net 5.
One immediate problem it creates is with recruitment - between 2019 and 2021 we went from .NET Core 3.0, through 3.1, .NET 5, and now .NET 6, and suddenly in the space of one job I went from up-to-date to 'legacy CV'.
Do you also list all the library versions you've worked with?
This is pretty absurd.
Personally I'd just say .NET in general and leave the specifics to the interview.
If someone only lists “Angular”, it could be Angular 4 from 2016 or something more relevant.
Same thing with .NET— the version can imply Windows-related experience (.NET Framework) vs. something more cloud native (.NET 6).
From a recruiting standpoint, it allows me to start conversations. I don’t take points off if candidates haven’t worked on the latest version, but one of my go-to questions is “What features in .NET X are you looking forward to using?”.
In an industry of constant change, it’s a negative signal if you don’t know anything about the current version of the platforms you use. Many, many candidates don’t.