Microsoft Launches Q&A for .NET
Tags: dotnet, csharp, webdev, news
Published: 2021-05-17 13:12:14

Microsoft, the American multinational trillion-dollar technology company never fails to astound us. The tech giants have launched their own Q&A forum for their .NET community where developers can unreluctantly ask all things .NET. You can also think of it as something like **Stack Overflow**, but only for .NET-related technologies. For those who are thinking what is .NET, simply put, its a software framework put together, developed & maintained by Microsoft. 

####Overview:
.NET is a free, cross-platform, open source developer platform for building many different types of applications. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for web, mobile, desktop, games, and IoT.

![.NET-Banner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x7d8el5uhxxtkbw6i9oe.png)

.NET has come a long way from it's original implementation i.e. **.NET framework** which supported running websites, services, desktop apps, and more **only on Windows** operating system to **.NET Core**, a cross-platform implementation for running websites, services, and console apps on **Windows, Linux, and macOS**.

####Introducing .NET 5:
**.NET 5**, as Microsoft says, is the future of .NET. During the Microsoft Build 2019, the Microsoft Team announced that .NET 5 is on its way out, and it would be arriving in 2020. The announcement added that there would be .NET 5 that is Opensource and Cross-platform, which will replace **.NET Framework, .NET Core and Xamarin** with a single unified platform called .NET 5 Framework.

![.NET5](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mxusdo3vjer0kjaiecpt.png)

As shown above, the main goal of .NET 5 is to empower unified .NET Client Application projects to create deliverables for various platforms including Windows, UNIX, Linux, Legacy Windows, iOS, Android, HTML5, and Macintosh. **.NET 5** will be powered with the best features of the .NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, and Xamarin to provide APIs, libraries, and run-time to create apps for Web, Windows, Mobile & IoT devices.

####.NET Q&A:
Microsoft has always put its community first & have constantly upgraded their products based on the community feedback. Since we now know that **.NET** has come here to stay & is not going to go any where for a long long time, Microsoft has come up with a platform where the community can interact with one another and get their questions answered. You can visit the platform here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/products/dotnet

![.NET.Q&A.1](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0h619ltkrpnaf91my8ay.PNG)

![.NET.Q&A.2](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9vfvw1hcdbqcc0xnbkr0.PNG)

Microsoft Q&A is the home for technical questions and answers about products from Microsoft. If you are looking for help on any Microsoft product you are sure to find it on Microsoft Q&A. Join the community of growing experts who are here to help developers get the help and answers they need on their projects. When you head to Microsoft Q&A for .NET you will find a wide range of .NET topics including runtime, app & web development, languages, data, and more. Browse questions from the community, ask your own, and help out others!

**"Have you ever been working on some code and ran into an issue and needed to ask someone for help?"** said Microsoft's **James Montemagno** in a Nov. 25 blog post [Announcing Microsoft Q&A for .NET](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-microsoft-q-and-a-for-dotnet/). 

"Maybe you are looking for assistance on how to start your next app or perhaps you are seeking some architecture guidance? What if there were one place where you could go to get your technical questions answered by experts from Microsoft and the community? Well there is now with the launch of Microsoft Q&A for .NET!"

The .NET community can breathe a sigh of relief now that we have our own dedicated Stack Overflow💪😅😅...

**References:** 
* https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2020/12/02/net-q-a.aspx
* https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-microsoft-q-and-a-for-dotnet/