Unleashing the Power of .NET 7: Here what‘s new

Microsoft’s .NET framework continues to soar to new heights with its latest update, .NET 7. Packed full of new features and enhancements, it promises to revolutionize the way developers build applications. From the harmonious combination of Blazor and .NET MAUI to create the hybrid Blazor Hybrid, to the ability to effortlessly manage a single memory cache and keep track of Activity changes, .NET 7 has something for everyone. With this in mind, let’s delve into the depths of this update, exploring the intricacies of its new features, and how they are designed to help developers create applications that are faster, more secure, and simply better. So whether you’re an experienced .NET developer, or just starting out, get ready to discover the power of .NET 7!

A Comprehensive List of Updates

Managed Extensibility Framework Enhancements

• The new APIs allow adding a single object instance to System.Composition.Hosting.

Improved Observability

• Brings improvements in support for the cloud-native specification (OpenTelemetry) under development.

Smarter Tab Completion with the “new” Command

• The dotnet command line interface now offers even more advanced tab completion, with added functionalities to the new command.

Dynamic PGO: A New Level of Optimization

• Dynamic PGO streamlines optimization efforts by eliminating the need for special tools. It is an improvement over the traditional Static PGO.

Cross-Platform Tar APIs

• The latest .NET update introduces cross-platform APIs for modifying and extracting tar archives.

Faster Code Execution with OSR

• OSR (On Stack Replacement) works hand-in-hand with tiered compilation to improve speed at startup by up to 25%, and overall performance by 10–30%.

Enhanced Cryptographic Security

• Microsoft focuses on X.500 Names Generation, making building on X500DistinguishedName easier and more secure.

Blazor and .NET MAUI Integration

• Blazor is a web app development framework, while .NET MAUI focuses on mobile applications. Microsoft is working on blending these two to create Blazor Hybrid for native app building.

Streamlined Cloud Development

• .NET 7 simplifies the creation of cloud-native applications, making installation and configuration of the authentication and authorization system easier and bringing small performance improvements at runtime.

Better Hot Reload

• C# Hot Reload is now available in Blazor WebAssembly and .NET for Android and iOS, with features like adding lambdas, classes, and fields to existing methods and classes.

Smoother Application Upgrades

• .NET 7 brings upgrade enhancements and the .NET Upgrade Assistant, making migrating applications easier.

Improved Serialization and Deserialization

• System.Text.Json includes features like JsonSerializerOptions and Patch methods, making serialization and deserialization of polymorphic type hierarchies possible.

Efficient String Copying

• With CopyString, you can now copy UTF-8 or UTF-16 strings without decoding thanks to new methods.

Activity Tracking Improvements

• Activity.CurrentChange in .NET 7 allows receiving notifications for value changes, replacing AsyncLocal<T> in .NET 6 for span context tracking.

Exposed Method Optimizations

• Resolves the performance issue of extra allocations when using enumeration interfaces and enables quick access to elements without allocations.

Time and Date Structures Enhancements

• .NET 7 now allows adding microsecond and nanosecond values to the different time and date structures.

Single and Multiple Memory Cache Support

• .NET 7 allows instantiating a single memory cache using the AddMemoryCache API, as well as multiple memory caches with GetCurrentStatistics.

Simplified Command Lines

• Commands no longer need the -- prefix, but the old versions of the commands are still available.

Regex Revolution

• With the new Regex Source Generator, optimizing patterns just got easier and faster. Limit the time spent on optimization by up to 5x with this tool, which operates within a partial class for seamless integration into your workflow.

Analyze and Improve with Ease

• A new analyzer is now available to look for Regex uses with the potential for conversion to the RegexGenerator source generator. Microsoft states that the output generated by the generator depends on the known values of the parameters and requires LangVersion for preview.

Streamline Regex Conversion

• The code fixer can now suggest using the RegexGenerator source generator methods and even override the default names. It also has the ability to replace the original code with a call to the new method, making the conversion process easier and more streamlined.

Startup Smarter

• Performance improvements are at the forefront of .NET 7, and startup time is no exception. According to Microsoft, you can expect reduced startup time of up to 10–15% with this new release.

Native AOT

• The introduction of Native AOT (Ahead-of-time) compilation brings performance benefits such as improved startup time, reduced memory usage, and smaller disk size. While .NET also offers ReadyToRun and Nano AOT, AOT is a new addition that enhances, rather than replaces, these options.

Entity Framework Core 7

• EF Core 7 introduces a game-changing update with entity updates and deletions moved to the database side, resulting in improved performance and reduced memory usage. Get ready to work smarter, not harder, with EF Core 7.

Critical Performance Tags

• This new feature in .NET 7 allows you to expose tag enumerator methods, providing a performance boost in scenarios where performance matters the most. With the new update, object enumerations can be performed without any loss of speed or performance.

Loop Optimizations

• This might seem like a minor improvement, but it still delivers performance enhancements. Microsoft has eliminated the initialization conditions of loop cloning variables, resulting in a 21% performance increase.

Streamlined Reflection

• .NET 7 brings a more streamlined approach to Reflection, making it easier to query metadata and dynamically call functionality. With the ability to emit dynamically generated methods at runtime, Reflection remains a powerful tool in the developer’s toolkit.

Additionally, I would recommend the following videos:

And the following article:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet-7

In conclusion, .NET 7 is a powerful framework packed with exciting new features. Thank you for taking the time to learn about its capabilities :)