What’s New in .NET 9? A Business-Centric Perspective on Major Improvements for .NET Product Development

According to Statista, .NET is the most popular back-end development technology with 25.29% of developers using it. One of the important reasons behind .NET’s popularity is that this framework constantly evolves. Each year, a new .NET update is released, improving the performance of apps and enhancing .NET software development speed. On November 12, 2024, Microsoft released a new version of the framework, .NET 9.

What benefits does .NET 9 offer to businesses that leverage it? Here is an ultimate overview of .NET 9 and its main improvements along with its business value.

Released in 2016 by Microsoft, .NET (also known as .NET Core) is one of the most popular software development frameworks in the world. .NET is a successor of .NET Framework. The technology is constantly evolving to capitalize on its main strengths, such as excellent performance, compatibility with the Microsoft tech stack, flexibility, security, community support, and cross-platform development capabilities. These benefits make .NET an ultimate solution for building diverse applications, ranging from cross-platform startup solutions to high-performing web apps having a special focus on back-end stability.

This November, Microsoft released .NET 9, the latest version of the framework. It introduces enhancements in app performance, boosts the development speed, and makes .NET apps more stable and performing in terms of interacting with databases. In addition, there are several new features of .NET 9 aimed at enhancing the framework’s capabilities useful for AI integration.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the main updates in .NET 9. From the business perspective, these updates are aimed at:

• Ensuring more convenient AI integration
• Enhancing development for different platforms with .NET
• Enhancing app performance
• Boosting the efficiency of development in terms of time and cost
• Making apps more secure and maintainable.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a must-have integration in software development. Microsoft, known for its strong focus on machine learning and active development of Azure AI Services, invests in creating AI building blocks that simplify the integration of AI algorithms into apps built with .NET. Therefore, the company introduces several AI-oriented improvements in .NET 9:

• New AI building blocks. An important improvement in .NET 9 is that the framework offers a unified layer of C# abstractions through the Microsoft.Extensions.AI and Microsoft.Extensions.VectorData packages. This innovation enhances the app’s interaction with AI services, including small and large language models (SLMs and LLMs).
• Improved OpenAI integration. The new release of .NET allows API developers to ensure more smooth integration with OpenAI. The Microsoft.AspNetCore.OpenAPI package provides built-in support for such integrations, which allows you to leverage the full potential of OpenAI in your .NET-based app. 
• TensorPrimitives and the new Tensor <T> type. These are the tools designed to work with large sets of numbers faster and easier. Such features expand .NET’s capabilities for AI integration. TensorPrimitive and the new Tensor <T>type enhances workflows with multi-dimensional data, which boosts the efficiency of ML computing, allowing you to deliver more self-sufficient and stable ML models. 

Since the release of .NET Core, .NET has been known as a great option for building software running on different platforms and operating systems. Such a focus allows companies to expand the outreach of their solutions faster while keeping them more maintainable across different platforms. With the new release, the framework’s features for building software for different platforms continue to evolve:

• .NET MAUI upgrade for cross-platform development. .NET MAUI, a cross-platform development framework within the .NET ecosystem, also has several improvements in terms of performance and reliability, as well as deeper integrations for mobile and desktop apps. With a 30% growth in developer usage, .NET MAUI has reached its all-time heights in terms of popularity. The number of apps built with .NET MAUI in the Google Play Store has more than doubled over the past year. The new .NET release adds numerous templates and controls, including 14 free open-source controls and libraries provided by Syncusion. All such innovations are aimed at enhancing the framework’s app development efficiency and UI/UX design customizability.  In addition, .NET 9 introduces several improvements in terms of building platform-native features with .NET MAUI. In particular, the framework now has access to the Android Asset Packs, improved interop with native libraries, and improved integration between Xcode and Visual Studio Code via the new Xcode Sync dotnet tool.
• Blazor upgrade. The new .NET release takes Blazor’s productivity to a new level, enabling developers to create high-performing web and hybrid apps much faster. The list of improvements includes enhanced performance across all areas, new Blazor templates for hybrid and web app development, and an expanded list of APIs ensuring more efficient integrations. 
• ASP.NET Core upgrade for web development. ASP.NET Core, an important part of the .NET ecosystem that efficiently deals with web development, continues to evolve. The new .NET release introduces some improvements concerning the efficiency of compilation, monitoring, and tracking in .NET 9. Such features boost the performance of web apps built with ASP.NET Core and reduce memory usage. 

In terms of app performance, .NET is the leading back-end framework. Microsoft aims to secure .NET’s status of a performance-oriented framework. Therefore, .NET 9 introduces some important enhancements aimed at boosting the efficiency and productivity of a .NET-based product:

• Entity Framework Core enhancements. Entity Framework (EF) is a library used for working with data in .NET software development. Some of the key innovations in .NET 9 are aimed at improving EF’s efficiency. In particular, the update introduces AOT compilation that brings extended platform support. With the new release, EF can rely on AOT support to pre-compile database queries, which significantly reduces execution time, which is an excellent benefit for rapid app development. This update also brings new opportunities for building resource-efficient and flexible containerized applications. 
• Dynamic Garbage Collection Adaptation / Dynamic Adaptation To Application Sizes (DATAS). It is a feature that automatically adjusts the application’s memory management, improving performance and efficiency. DATAS was added in .NET 8.0 as an opt-in feature. In .NET 9, it is a default feature, which improves memory management. This approach is beneficial to apps with “bursty” workloads and memory-constrained environments. Overall, DATAS ensures more efficient and tailored resource consumption, optimizing the performance of apps built with .NET 9.
• New LINQ methods. LINQ methods are essential .NET features applied for finding, organizing, and working with data, enhancing app performance and resource-efficiency. .NET 9 offers developers new LINQ methods, namely CountBy and AggregateBy methods that create cleaner code and enhance data processing, ultimately, improving the app’s overall performance. There are also several notable improvements in building LINQ Queries. Through such optimization, .NET 9 brings faster computation for complex operations. The new release also enhances caching for LINQ queries, which also has a positive impact on app performance. 

Many valuable innovations in .NET 9 are aimed at boosting the developers’ efficiency, which translates into a product’s shorter time to market and lower project cost. These are the most important of such updates:

• Improvements in the .NET runtime: There is a new attribute model for feature switches with trimming support in the .NET 9 runtime. As a result, developers will find it easier to enable or disable features without extensive changes to the codebase. This update brings notable improvements in terms of control over the development process and development speed.
• .NET SDK workload sets. There is a notable addition to the .NET 9 SDK. It introduces workload sets, a feature allowing to keep all workloads at a specific version until intentionally updated. As a result, the development environment becomes more stable and manageable, especially in terms of compatibility issues.
• GitHub Copilot enhancements for .NET development. GitHub Copilot is an efficient tool that provides automation for code completion and editing, enhancing the development efficiency. The .NET 9 release provides software engineers with new AI automation features, enhancing code variable inspection, debugging, and other code editing workflows. Such features can significantly enhance the development speed ensuring clear and consistent code. 
• System.Text.Json enhancements. .NET 9 introduces more possibilities for JSON schema customization. With JSON schema export, developers can simplify complex JSON structures, which makes development simpler and enhances its speed.
• New PersistedAssemblyBuilder class for reflection. It is a feature that simplifies code debugging and simplifies the inspection of dynamically generated code. This, in turn, translates into better development efficiency.
• Improved unit testing integration. .NET 9 uses MSBuild integration in order to run multiple unit tests simultaneously. This innovation can enhance the development speed dramatically by reducing the time required to validate code changes.
• Terminal Logger improvements. In .NET 9, this feature goes as a default setting, which provides summaries of total failures and warnings at the end of code builds. As a result, the developers can manage such builds more efficiently because such a feature allows them to quickly understand build outcomes.
• C# 13 new language features. .NET 9 introduces new language features for C#, which allows developers to write C# code faster with less boilerplate.

.NET 9 also introduces features that simplify app maintenance and security monitoring. These improvements are outlined below:

• PriorityQueue enhancements. .NET 9 adds a new “Remove” method in the PriorityQueue class to handle priority updates without recreating the entire queue. This simplifies queue management in applications that require dynamic priority adjustments.
• Updated cryptography. In simple words, .NET introduces new features for enhanced code maintenance. The new CryptographicOperations.HashData method allows developers to specify the desired algorithm directly, eliminating the need to handle multiple methods for different hash functions. Besides, the new KMAC (Keccak Message Authentication Code) algorithm enhances security with robust message authentication and pseudorandom generation capabilities.
• New TimeSpan FromX methods. It is a feature allowing software engineers to eliminate coding precision errors that can occur with floating-point calculations and contributes to more reliable time-related logic in applications.
• NuGet security audits. With this package, .NET 9 uses automated security audits allowing the developers to identify vulnerabilities in dependencies earlier on and foster better application security.

Typically, an upgrade from an earlier version of .NET Core to .NET 9 does not pose any challenge. It is important to keep track over project dependencies, libraries, and NuGet packages, as well as to update them to versions compatible with .NET 9. Another vital aspect is updating some parts of the app’s codebase in order to leverage the new features available in .NET 9. Overall, an experienced .NET development team is unlikely to face any challenges while dealing with such a task.

Upgrading an app from .NET Framework to .NET 9 would be a more challenging task requiring a code migration.This step involves a major shift to .NET’s modern, cross-platform ecosystem. Such a migration often requires converting projects to the SDK-style project format with updated configurations. It is also fundamental to thoroughly review the features in the existing application. Just like .NET Framework lacks many features available in .NET 9, .NET 9 does not support certain .NET Framework features, like app domains or Windows-only APIs. All these differences should be considered during the migration. After a migration, you will need to run thorough testing to make sure that all parts of the modernized app are running properly. While such migrations are associated with several challenges, they can be handled by an experienced software development team. 

The innovations arriving with the .NET 9 release bring many benefits to businesses that aim to develop .NET-based products. Released in November 2024, this update introduces new AI building blocks, enhances cross-platform development with .NET, boosts .NET product development speed, enhances the performance of .NET software, and provides security and maintenance improvements. 

We at Leobit use .NET as one of our core technologies, hence,  we keep up with all innovations in the .NET environment. The release of a new .NET version is a very important event for us, and we take no time to start implementing its innovations. Leobit is a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Digital App and Innovation with a portfolio of many .NET development projects. 

Contact us to successfully leverage .NET 9 for developing your ideal product or upgrade your existing legacy software to .NET 9.