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.NET 8 and Continuous Improvement: Leveraging the Latest Framework Updates

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Introduction

The release of .NET 8 (November 2023) marks a major milestone in Microsoft’s “continuous improvement” journey for its development platform. As an LTS (Long-Term Support) release, .NET 8 will be supported for three years, giving advanced developers, tech startups, and small tech business owners a stable foundation to build upon. This stability, combined with a wealth of new features and enhancements, means teams can confidently adopt .NET 8 for critical projects while continuously improving performance, security, and developer productivity.

In this comprehensive overview, we’ll explore the .NET 8 features that are driving this continuous improvement – from low-level runtime and .NET 8 performance improvements to high-level web framework updates in ASP.NET Core 8 and Blazor .NET 8. We’ll also dive into the C# 12 new features (like C# 12 primary constructors), .NET 8 runtime enhancements, and specialized capabilities such as ASP.NET Core 8 performance optimizations and .NET 8 Native AOT compilation. Along the way, we’ll reference official documentation and benchmarks, compare Blazor Server vs WebAssembly approaches, and highlight how these updates fill gaps from previous versions. The goal is to show how leveraging .NET 8’s latest updates can help your team continuously improve software quality, speed, and scalability.

.NET 8 Runtime Enhancements

  • Dynamic Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) now enabled by default.
  • AVX-512 SIMD vectorization support.
  • Dynamic memory management for GC in containers.
  • System.Collections.Frozen: FrozenDictionary and FrozenSet.
  • Optimized JSON serialization with System.Text.Json.

Benchmark Results:

  • ASP.NET Core on .NET 8: ~1 million RPS (JSON)
  • 24% gain in “Fortunes” database test over .NET 7

ASP.NET Core 8 Performance and Features

  • Kestrel server improvements: reduced allocations, TLS sendfile, HTTP/3 by default.
  • Output Caching Middleware:
app.UseOutputCache(options =>

{

    options.AddPolicy("Default", builder =>

        builder.Expire(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30)));

});
  • Minimal APIs: automatic validation, form binding, antiforgery.
  • Native AOT and IL Trimming support extended.

Blazor .NET 8: Unified Full-Stack Web UI

  • New Blazor Web App template supports hybrid rendering:
    • Static SSR
    • Interactive Server
    • Interactive WebAssembly
    • Interactive Auto (prerendered + switch to WASM)
  • Streaming rendering for faster perceived performance.
  • JITerpreter runtime and optional AOT compilation for WASM.
  • Full Blazor-native Identity UI support.

Blazor Server vs WebAssembly:

  • Server: fast load, centralized execution, needs constant connection.
  • WASM: offline capable, full client execution, longer load, higher CPU.

C# 12 New Features

  • Primary Constructors for all classes and structs:
public class Point(int x, int y)

{

    public int Sum => x + y;

}

Collection Expressions:

var nums = [1, 2, 3];

var matrix = [[1,2], [3,4]];
  • Optional parameters in lambdas.
  • using aliases for any type:

using Age = System.Int32;

.NET 8 Native AOT Compilation

  • Ahead-of-Time compilation with lower memory, faster startup.
  • Smaller binaries with tree shaking.
  • New support for macOS and reduced Linux binary sizes.
  • Useful for:
    • CLI tools
    • Microservices
    • Azure Functions
    • IoT / Edge apps
  • Config:

<PublishAot>true</PublishAot>

Conclusion

.NET 8 empowers continuous improvement across the stack:

  • Runtime: Faster execution with PGO, SIMD, GC tuning.
  • Web: ASP.NET Core gains HTTP/3, caching, minimal API polish.
  • UI: Blazor now unified with server & WASM flexibility.
  • Language: C# 12 removes boilerplate, simplifies collection and lambda syntax.
  • Native AOT: Small, secure, and fast binaries.

For startups and growing teams, these advancements mean better scaling, lower cloud costs, and more productive developers. .NET 8 sets a new bar for what a modern development platform should deliver.

Sources

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