.NET Development and Framework

Modern .NET is a platform on a release rhythm — not the static framework that some teams still imagine when they hear the name. Once you accept the LTS-and-STS cadence, almost every architectural conversation inside a .NET shop changes. Lifecycle planning becomes a quarterly topic. Major version migrations become routine rather than projects. And the question stops being “which version are we on” and becomes “what is our story for the next two.”

A recurring theme in this collection is evolution over time. The runtime, the BCL, and the SDK each move on their own track, and the interesting work happens at the seams. Dynamic PGO, tiered compilation, and the steady improvements to the JIT have changed what performance-sensitive code looks like — patterns that were defensible in .NET Framework era are now actively slower than the idiomatic version. Articles trace these shifts release by release rather than treating any single version as the canonical reference.

The BCL has been quietly transformed by additions like SearchValues<T>, FrozenDictionary, Span<T>, Memory<T>, and the surrounding ecosystem of ref struct types. These are not niche features — they are the new defaults for anyone writing hot-path code. Articles cover when reaching for them pays back, when the older API is still the right answer, and the surprising corners where they interact badly with closures, async, or older library boundaries.

SDK ergonomics deserve their own attention. Central Package Management, project-level PackageReference graphs, source generators, AOT, and the slow but real maturing of the workload model all shape what a maintainable solution looks like. Articles cover the project-system trade-offs that compound silently across a multi-year codebase.

The LTS/STS rhythm itself is treated as a planning concern. Articles cover how to schedule upgrades against a real release window, when to skip an STS release, and how to keep the upgrade muscle exercised so that the next migration is not the one that breaks things.

EU AI Act for .NET Teams: What August 2026 Actually Demands

The EU AI Act deadline everyone feared got pushed to December 2027, but nobody told you the transparency rules still land in weeks. Here is what actually changed, what still hits your chatbot in August, and the C# you need to prove it when someone asks.

EF Core Plugins: Owning Migrations with ExcludeFromMigrations

ExcludeFromMigrations() keeps plugin entities fully queryable in the host DbContext while stripping migration ownership of their tables. Combined with per-context migration history tables, IDesignTimeDbContextFactory, and an explicit application-layer data access pattern, it enables truly independent plugin schema evolution.

EF Core Plugins: When Migrations Go Wrong

EF Core’s entity discovery is thorough by design. In a plugin architecture, that thoroughness becomes a liability: navigation properties pull plugin entities into the host migration, creating shared schema ownership that breaks plugin isolation, causes schema drift, and makes clean plugin uninstalls impossible.

Building an MCP Server in .NET Without Buying the Hype

MCP is JSON-RPC with conventions, not magic. This guide builds a Model Context Protocol server in .NET with the official SDK: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, tightly-scoped typed tools, JWT authentication, prompt-injection defenses, OpenTelemetry tracing, and the production failure modes the demos never mention.

Structured Logging Patterns That Actually Survive Production

Structured Logging That Survives

Every pattern here addresses a failure mode I have either shipped or inherited. Source generators on hot paths, scope opt-in per provider, end-to-end correlation ID propagation, log levels as an ops contract, sink selection as an architecture decision, and OpenTelemetry Logs for greenfield services: six concrete changes that make structured logging trustworthy in production.