.NET Versions

With the recent release of .NET 4 a lot of confusion has crept into .NET versions. Right from the beginning .NET versions numbers are in sync with C# and ASP.NET. However, with .NET 3.5 and .NET 4 things have changed.
In this blog,  I attempt to clear some of your doubts regarding versions in .NET.

First C# and Visual Basic.NET are two main languages that are used to develop application on .NET. The choice between C# and VB.NET is mainly a personal choice. C# is also called as Visual C# and C#.NET. They all mean the same C#.

.NET 1.0

First versions of .NET was .NET 1.0, which was released in feb,2002.  The other versions were  ASP.NET 1.0,  C# 1.0  and Visual Basic.NET 2002. It is common to find people refer to .NET 1.0  as .NET 2002 and C# 1.0 as C# 2002 etc. Though not strictly right, it is accepted.

.NET 1.1

Next versions called  .NET 1.1,  was released in  2003.  C# 1.1, Visual Basic.NET 2003, ASP.NET 1.1 and Visual Studio.NET 2003 were the versions.
It was not a major release, a few changes here and there.

.NET 2.0

Next versions was released in 2005. It was major release and added a lot to ASP.NET especially. It added concepts like partial class and generics to C# and VB.NET. A change in major version number is quite justified.
ASP.NET 1.1 became ASP.NET 2.0,C# 1.1 became C# 2.0, 2003 became 2005 in Visual Basic.NET 2005 and Visual Studio.NET 2005.

.NET 3.0

This was a silent release. Not many know that there was  .NET 3.0.  It was mainly released along with Windows Vista and it added WCF (Window Communication Foundation), WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation).

However it did not change ASP.NET or C# or VB.NET.  Visual Studio.NET also remained the same.

This is where the version number of ASP.NET and .NET differed. Only .NET has become 3.0, leaving the rest at 2.0.

.NET 3.5

The latest release is .NET 3.5.  It has brought a change in all. Now versions numbers for C# remained 3.0 but ASP.NET changed to 3.5 causing all kinds of confusion.

Visual Basic.NET 2008 is the new version of visual basic and Visual Studio.NET 2008 was released. LINQ was a major addition.

C# and VB.NET have been enhanced with very interesting features, which are mainly used in the context of LINQ.

.NET 4

The latest release is .NET 4.  It has brought a change in all. Now versions numbers for C# and ASP.NET changed to 4 causing all kinds of confusion.

Visual Basic.NET 2010 is the new version of visual basic and Visual Studio.NET 2010 was released. ROUTING was a major addition.

Summary of versions

The following table summaries the versions of .NET  and its related technologies as far.

	.NET 1.0	.NET 1.1	.NET 2.0	.NET 3.0	.NET 3.5	.NET 4
ASP.NET	1.0	1.1	2.0	Not changed	3.5	4
C#	1.0	1.1	2.0	Not changed	3.0	4
Visual Basic.NET	2002	2003	2005	Not changed	2008	2010
Visual Studio.NET	2002	2003	2005	Not changed	2008	2010