Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET!
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/13
I almost missed this: [Wayback/Archive] Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET! – .NET Blog.
Given I am still recovering from the long period of cancer treatments, I am glad that Beth Massi reminded me (a “thank you” is below the signature):
To keep the story about myself short: currently I am cancer free, long term (i.e. 10 years) looks dim, but my mental focus has recovered and I am getting joy again doing technical stuff. I am still working on the increasing my mental and physical endurance, so real work is not yet possible but unlike half a year ago, I am confident I will be able to eventually.
Back to the .NET story (as I have learned when to conserve energy): I kept track of Anders Hejlsberg ever since Turbo Pascal 1.0 on CP/M (see The calculators that got me into programming (via: calculators : Algorithms for the masses – julian m bucknall)) and when after the Visual J++ lawsuits things a first got a bit too silent to my liking.
Soon however there were rumours about COOL (the initial name for C#) and beta’s appeared. I got hooked even before the release on February 13, 2002 – see [Wayback/Archive] Microsoft Releases .NET Framework, Visual Studio .NET — Redmond Channel Partner. Since then, I used .NET and Delphi alongside ever since (Delphi even included a .NET compiler, heck there still are some pieces of the Delphi IDE written in Visual J#, the J++ successor). Each new release I was impressed by what happened on the C# language level and .NET framework level.
Already in 2002, .NET Rotor (now Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure) showed the cross platform potential, and the Ximian cross platform implementation Mono really took it next level, so I was excited seeing Miguel de Icaza, Nat Friedman and their Xamarin team (where most Ximian people had moved after first being taken over by Novell, which in turn was bought by Attachmate, then the team laid off) join Microsoft.
The joining was instrumental in getting the .NET Core (now called .NET) cross platform redesign of the ground as opposed to the originally Windows based and now sort of dormant original .NET Framework (though still supported, new development has stalled at .NET Framework version 4.8).
So: the original .NET Framework has turned 20 today, and 5.5 year old .NET Core has taken over the .NET family into the bright cross platform future.
Happy birthday .NET family!
Oh: be sure to watch the .NET 20th Anniversary – YouTube on Valentine’s Day (which by the way is the Delphi anniversary too: it turns 27, see [Wayback/Archive] Launching Delphi – Feb 14, 1995 – TheOpenForce.com).
–jeroen
PS: for more trips down memory lane, please read the below posts (Danny Thorpe who, together with the now retired David Intersimone, helped completing various bits of these stories, cannot tell them any more as he has passed away some 3 months ago):
- Behind the Code with Anders Hejlsberg (via: Cape Cod Gunny Does Delphi: Priceless)
- A few more interesting links on Delphi, C# and CLR history (trip down memory lane; Peter Sollich)
More Tweets:
- [Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: “@BethMassi @obelink @dotnet Hi Beth, thanks for reminding me as this was totally not on my radar yet (it’s been a rough few years, see profile, so still catching up on things). I remember the early days well. Missing your insights on conferences (DevDays/TechDays) here in The Netherlands. Maybe one day!” / Twitter
- [Archive] GitHub on Twitter: “🎂 🥳 🎈 Happy 20th Birthday @dotnet 🎈🥳 🎂 Anyone ordered a Slice for the charming Octocat in the red polo?? #dotNETLovesMe …” / Twitter
- [Archive] Beth Massi on Twitter: “Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET! THANK YOU everyone in this amazing community. @dotnet would not be where it is today without all of you. ❤️ https://t.co/Pf4qVdSYqp #dotNETLovesMe …” / Twitter
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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