Major update to Microsoft’s development platform, now available in a first preview, will focus on the development of cloud-native and AI-powered applications. Credit: ABB Photo / Shutterstock Microsoft’s upcoming .NET 9 release, a planned major update to the company’s cross-platform development platform, will focus on the development of cloud-native and AI-powered applications, the company said in a bulletin on February 13. For cloud-native developers, Microsoft will aim at improving runtime performance, application monitoring, and delivering “paved paths” to popular production infrastructure and services. The latter refers to running Kubernetes and using managed database and caching services such as Redis. These improvements will be delivered as multiple layers of the .NET stack. These capabilities come together with .NET Aspire, Microsoft said, which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of building cloud applications. Alongside .NET 9, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code will add new development and deployment experiences for .NET Aspire. Microsoft said .NET 9 also will make it easier for .NET developers to integrate AI into applications. Steps were taken in this direction in .NET 8, which brought samples and documentation for AI workloads, C# clients for vector databases, and libraries such as Semantic Kernel. With .NET 9, Microsoft said developers will find libraries and documentation to work with OpenAI and open-source models, along with the .NET team’s continued collaboration on Semantic Kernel, OpenAI, and Azure SDK to ensure .NET developers have a “first-class experience” building intelligent applications. Preview 1 of .NET 9 arrived this week. A production release of .NET 9 is due in November, roughly a year after the current .NET 8 arrived. Microsoft will support .NET 9 for 18 months. In addition to .NET 9 Preview 1, Microsoft released .NET Aspire Preview 3, which features UI improvements to the dashboard and new component support including Azure OpenAI, Apache Kakfa, Oracle, MySQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and Orleans, Microsoft’s framework for building distributed applications. Related content analysis Beyond the usual suspects: 5 fresh data science tools to try today The mid-month report includes quick tips for easier Python installation, a new VS Code-like IDE just for Python and R users, and five newer data science tools you won't want to miss. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 12, 2024 2 mins Python Programming Languages Software Development analysis Generative AI won’t fix cloud migration You’ve probably heard how generative AI will solve all cloud migration problems. It’s not that simple. Generative AI could actually make it harder and more costly. By David Linthicum Jul 12, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Artificial Intelligence Cloud Computing news HR professionals trust AI recommendations HireVue survey finds 73% of HR professionals trust AI to make candidate recommendations, while 75% of workers are opposed to AI making hiring decisions. By Paul Krill Jul 11, 2024 3 mins Technology Industry Careers how-to Safety off: Programming in Rust with `unsafe` What does it mean to write unsafe code in Rust, and what can you do (and not do) with the 'unsafe' keyword? The facts may surprise you. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 11, 2024 8 mins Rust Programming Languages Software Development Resources Videos