The Next Generation of .NET vNext

Microsoft recently announced the newest version of ASP.NET MVC, codenamed vNext (Version 6). Unlike previous version releases, the goal of vNext was to make significant structural changes that will drastically improve the software development process in terms of efficiency and time. Some of these new implementations have been in the works for over 10 years!

vNext is utilizing a JSON-based project structure to cut allocation of memory used when making server requests, specifically removing dependencies built on the System.Web infrastructure, cutting the amount of memory allocated by server requests by 15 times! Removing dependencies like this for vNext will not only reduce the amount of memory used for these requests, but will allow the framework to not rely on one specific host, which is great for servers that manage several deployed sites. MVC6 can also include Web API and Web Pages to remove the overlap between the frameworks as seen in the previous versions of MVC and developers can choose their platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), IDE (Visual Studio, Mono, and even command line or within an application), NuGet packages, and any cloud-optimized libraries based on their preference to build on top of the .Net Framework.

The overhead of making certain requests definitely helps with respect to an applications efficiency but the real time benefit, at least for software developers, is the amount of time waiting for your projects to compile. Developers no longer have to stop an instance of the project and wait for the compiler to rebuild it to see any changes made. Instead, vNext uses a real-time compiler named “Roslyn” to compile on the fly. This will drastically minimize the amount of time a developer sits idly waiting for a small change to build and encourages faster iterations.

vNext is open sourced via the .NET Foundation, and offers the opportunity for the community to get involved and ultimately raises the bar on building a quality and scalable web application. The alpha version 0.1 of vNext is currently available for download on their GitHub.