Introduction

The Microsoft

.NET Framework has come a very long way since its foundation in Jan 2002. For an era, .NET has remained the very first choice among theSoftware Development Companies & Developers’ Community. Every powerful thing comes to a stage where you think about its future. For .NET developers, the future of .NET in 2023 is a valid question now. Some Developers & Experts are calling .NET a powerful Framework for the Future & some are asking questions & pronouncing it Dead.

Why Choose Framework?

Frameworks now become a necessary part of every frontend & backend development. It’s really considered stupid now if you start reinventing the wheel in this growing development trend.

Choosing a Framework as a developer or as an enterprise is a tricky task. You must choose a framework that should be popular in the market for about 5 to 10 years. Every Framework has its pros & cons. There’re many factors that you should take into consideration before taking a final decision of choosing the right framework for you.

In this article, we’ll compare some stats to get the answers to some of the very common questions, whether we should keep working on .Net or ASP.NET, or its time to switch? Is .NET fare for developing Software in 2022? Does it meet the growing performance demand? So, what is the future of .NET in 2022 & after that?

.Net Release Cycle & Support Policy

Begin with .NET 5, Microsoft announced the yearly release of .NET versions. The release will be in November every year.

There’s a difference that we need to understand between Even .NET versions & Odd versions. .NET 6 & .NET 8 are long-term supported versions & get patches for 3 years. On the other side .NET 7 is a short-term release that will get patches for only 18 months. The below image will help you to give better understanding.

No doubt that Microsoft is adding great features with every update coming in the newer version. .NET 7 is coming. If you want to read about what’s coming with .NET 7. You should read this.

What’s Coming with .NET 7

.NET Edge Over Other Frameworks

After the launch of .NET 5, .NET provides, libraries, tools & APIs to Develop, Test & Deploy Apps on all platforms like macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, IOS, TvOS, WatchOS, Tablets & IoT.

Let’s dive into some statistics & check what is the popularity of .NET

Future of .NET: Trends & Statistics

StackOverflow Survey Comparision

Most Popular Frameworks

StackOverflow published its 2022 survey last month. Actually, they merged .NET Framework & .NET Core into a single category this year. We can clearly see that .NET is leading the Most Popular Frameworks List this year as well with a little gain in popularity from 34.2% to 34.55%.

Most Popular Web Frameworks

ASP.NET Core & ASP.NET popularity is also almost the same as compared the previous year. The entire list is almost the same, the only difference is that StackOverflow categorized Node.js as a Web Framework.

Most Loved & Dreaded Frameworks

ASP.NET Core dropped 2 steps in the list of Most Loved Framework.

Jobs Stats Comparison

Indeed.com compared the number of jobs in 2022 & compared with the previous year. We can clearly see that C# jobs got a boost this year.

Here’re some more Jobs Stats on some other platforms.

hotframeworks Ranking

hotframeworks.com also shares a ranking of top frameworks by comparing GitHub Starts & StackOverflow Questions Count.

C# Popularity in StackOverflow, TIOBE & PYPL

There’s no change in C# popularity in the 2022 StackOverflow Survey. On the other hand, we can see the decline in some of the very popular technologies like Python & Java. This could be good NEWS for .NET community that Microsoft is actively improving the framework & adding great features.

TIOBE Index

There’s little but a positive change of +0.82% in the C# popularity of the TIOBE Index. Python is still leading this list.

PYPL Index

PYPL Index also shows very little positive change in C# popularity but we can see a negative trend in Python & Java Popularity.

Conclusion: Is it worth developing software on .NET in 2022 and beyond?

The short answer is YES. The scope of .NET looks really wide & the future of .NET is very bright. .NET proved itself a modern, reliable, secure, powerful & versatile framework in the last 20 years suitable for all platforms & from small to enterprise level software. No doubt that .NET has been improving over the years and brings new features with the every new update.

Thank you for reading the article. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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