(Yes, the old framework will still exist after it's been replaced - the same way VB 6 still exists after being replaced by VB.NET and IE still exists after being replaced by Edge.)
But somewhere along the way it was decided that the core platform was the future and where all future improvement will happen. This leaves all .net framework code on a dead end platform. They will not be able to take advantage of any new improvement or even the new versions of C#.
I don't think MS deliberately decided to break backwards compatibility in .net. It just sort of happened because the core project got out of control.
A more accurate representation of events would be that .NET Core suddenly fueled a huge interest and growth in .NET as a platform which it hadn't seen in a long time (it was actually in decline!).
Microsoft probably decided that for the overall, long-term health of the .NET platform it was more important to cater to these new users, than maintaining the status quo for the existing users, some which were already considering leaving ship.
Looking back right now, it certainly looks like that was the right decision to make.
I think it comes down to Core was not conceived as the next version of .net but as an alternative runtime for a specialized purpose. So attention was not paid to decoupling or backwards compatibility or migration paths. And now we have a disaster which will dwarf the python 2/3 conundrum.
Given that Python 3 has been around for 12 years now, and still doesn't have universal adoption, I kinda doubt this is going to be near as bad a migration as that was.
At least .NET 5 will have compatible string-types once you've upgraded your projects :)
Given that .net is much more entrenched than Python was 12 years ago, I think it going to take a lot longer! Frameworks like WebForms and WCF will not be ported, so projects depending on these will require massive rewrites. This a lot more work than fixing string encodings and putting parentheses after "print".
WebForms is terrible and I see no reason for anyone to pull that monstrosity of a "I wish we had a VB/Windows WYSIWYG app-editor for the web" impedance-mismatch into a new codebase.
Applications which haven't migrated off WebForms yet, probably have little to gain by moving to .NET Core anyway.
WCF has been open-sourced[1] and ported (at least the client libraries) and you have separate community-projects[2] working on porting the rest of the stack to be compatible and usable with .NET Core.
If the community really want's to go full WCF on the new stack, they are empowered to do so.
Sure, but that is beside the point. You don't make legacy code disappear just by wishing it away.
The goal for the initial .NET Core project was to have something cross-platform, modular and lightweight to build Linux-deployable cloud-services with.
Once that reached a mature state, they could expand scope.
And now, after .NET Core 3.x has landed, it has matured so much, that MS can see one single unified path forward which also includes some things which previously was only possible using the traditional .NET Framework (4.8).
So now they are adding those use-cases to the "Core" package as well, without compromising on what .NET Core was supposed to deliver. I honestly don't see anything wrong with that.
If you want to start a project from scratch, sure Core/5 is nice.
As someone who has been working with .NET since the first release: tell me about it! I fully concur. I don't deny this, nor excuse it.
That said, I believe that once Microsoft decided that it was OK to break compatibility, they managed to improve upon lots of things which up until that point had become fairly painful on the traditional .NET Framework.
You win some, you lose some, I guess?
Anyway, I do hope they succeed and the .NET 5 unification goes smoothly. I want those C# 9 features - but I also need some old third-party libraries to keep working.
But things seem impossible for some new features, for example async steam just need new feature from core CLR.
So after .C#8, they decide only to support it on .NET core
I'll be honest here. The migration from .NET Framework to .NET Core is a pain. I see why things were done the way they were done, but it's still a real pain.
That said: for green-field works NET Core is clearly superior.
> PowerShell Core is past version 7 but is still missing many modules, including some key Microsoft ones
Just like .NET Core's main mission was not to replace the entire .NET Framework, the same applies to PowerShell Core.
.NET Core was created to make developing .NET-based web/cloud-services easier, faster, using less space/resources at runtime, and to have a fully supported cross-platform story. And at that it has been a wild success.
Almost everything about .NET Core is better to work with than the traditional .NET Framework (at least for the workloads it was intended for), and I'm always depressed when I have to move back to work on the "old" stack.
In this regard PowerShell Core is (as I see it) not meant to fully replace regular PowerShell either, but to be a good platform to do your cross-platform dev-ops'y build and deployment scripts related to your .NET Core deliverables.
It may not be what you want it to be, but it has a clear mission, and it's delivering fairly well on that.
> Lastly, I got fed up with Microsoft releasing yet another half-baked GUI framework.
I think this applies to pretty much everyone, which is why they never catch on, and Microsoft inevitably trying to "solve" this by releasing yet another framework.
That said the MAUI-presentation on this year's Build looked pretty convincing. If I had time to spare and had some small projects/POCs I had to work on, I might had given it a spin.