The Legends of .NET

Events, products, stories,and people

  • Summary

    Why this page exists.

    The Initial Goals

    Microsoft announced on February 24, 2016 that it would acquire Xamarin. That day became a milestone throughout the .NET platform evolution.

     

    This page has been set up to celebrate the merge and unveiled the other milestones in the more than 15 years of .NET history.

     

    This page is managed by LeXtudio.

  • Related Items

    Learn more about the legends.

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    The Book

    ".NET Legend"

    A book titled .NET Legend was written by Lex Li based on the materials collected for this timeline.

     

    Its Chinese edition has been published in May 2017 on Lulu.com, with its home page at SXL. The English edition is still a work in progress.

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    The Slides

    History on .NET Ecosystem

    In September 2017, Lex Li gave a talk at Montreal .NET Mobile Developers Meetup Group.

     

    The talk covers some of the stories mentioned in this timeline. The original slides for the presentation can be found at GitHub.

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    Chinese Version

    Translation into Chinese

    This timeline page was originally developed in Chinese for a talk Lex Li gave at Microsoft GCR MVP Meetup on Mar 12, 2016.

     

    The Chinese version of the timeline page can be found here.

  • Timeline

    Events ordered by years.

    2018

    Where Do We Go From Here

    • January 5, Unity announced its plan to replace MonoDevelop-Unity IDE with Visual Studio Community starting in Unity 2018.1 release.
    • January 22, Oracle announced ODP.NET Core Beta.
    • January 29, CodePlex became archived.
    • February 2, Microsoft published .NET Core 2.1 roadmaps.
    • February 5, Microsoft announced .NET Framework 4.7.2 Early Access build 3052.
    • February 16, Oracle made ODP.NET Core Beta available for download. It also updated its .NET Core statement of direction.
    • February 27, Microsoft published .NET Core 2.1 Preview 1.
    • March 6, Oracle published ODP.NET Core Beta 2.
    • March 26, Unity released its C# source code under a reference-only license.
    • March 28, Unity announced its plan to make .NET Framework 4.x compatible scripting runtime the new default.
    • March 29, JetBrains announced XAML preview tool for WPF in Rider.
    • April 11, Microsoft released .NET Core 2.1 Preview 2.
    • April 19, JetBrains released Rider 2018.1 with Entity Framework 6.x and Roslyn analyzer support.
    • April 30, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.7.2 with Windows 10 April 2018 Update.
    • May 30, Microsoft shipped .NET Core 2.1.
    • July 10, Unity shipped 2018.2 release. IL2CPP became the default scripting backend.

    2017

    Baseline for Innovation

    • January 20, Xamarin released Visual Studio for Mac Preview 3.
    • January 27, Microsoft updated Visual Studio 2017 RC. .NET Core SDK 1.0 RC3 was included.
    • March 7, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2017 RTM and .NET Core Tooling 1.0. Official .NET Core reference application was also published to GitHub.
    • March 7, Xamarin released Visual Studio for Mac Preview 4 as well as Visual Studio Mobile Center Preview.
    • March 15, Xamarin released Visual Studio for Mac Preview 5.
    • April 5, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.7 as well as Visual Studio 2017 Update 1.
    • April 5, Xamarin shipped 15.1 release and Visual Studio for Mac Preview 6.
    • April 5, Microsoft open sourced MSTest V2, the new unit testing framework for multiple platforms.
    • April 11, Xamarin shipped Visual Studio for Mac Preview 7.
    • April 21, Jeroen Frijters announced the end of IKVM.NET.
    • May 10, Xamarin shipped Visual Studio for Mac to replace Xamarin Studio, as well as 15.2 release of all Xamarin products based on Mono 5.0.
    • May 10, Microsoft shipped .NET Core 2.0 Preview 1 and Visual Studio 2017 Update 15.3 Preview.
    • June 28, Microsoft shipped .NET Core 2.0 Preview 2.
    • July 11, Unity announced Unity 2017.1 release, which includes Scripting Runtime upgrade (experimental) to support C# 6 and .NET 4.6 API.
    • August 3, JetBrains released Rider 2017.1 RTM, a cross platform .NET IDE with C#/VB.NET/F# support.
    • August 14, Microsoft shipped .NET Core 2.0 final release and Visual Studio 2017 Update 15.3, featuring C# 7.1 and .NET Standard 2.0.
    • August 14, Xamarin released Visual Studio for Mac and other updates to match the Windows product line.
    • August 24, RemObjects released Elements 9.2, introducing Iodine, the Java language compiler for .NET/ObjC runtime.
    • September 7, Microsoft took ownership of NuGet.org from .NET Foundation to make necessary changes for China developers. 
    • October 10, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2017 15.4, mainly to support Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. UWP started to support .NET Standard 2.0.
    • October 12, JetBrains shipped Rider 2017.2, with full .NET Core 2.0 support.
    • October 17, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.7.1 as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, featuring full .NET Standard 2.0 support.
    • November 13, Miguel de Icaza announced the new Mono .NET Interpreter to improve MSIL code execution on platforms such as iOS.
    • November 13, RemObjects announced Element 9.3, with WinForms and WPF designer support for Iodine (Java) projects.
    • November 15, Microsoft announced C# 7.2, F# support for .NET Core and .NET Standard in Visual Studio, as well as C# 8.0 on Connect 2017 conference.
    • November 16, Microsoft announced Windows Compatibility Pack for .NET Core, a few Windows only NuGet packages.
    • December 4, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2017 15.5 and the corresponding Visual Studio for Mac upgrade, featuring C# 7.2 and many other improvements. Xamarin.Forms started to support .NET Standard 2.0.
    • December 10, RemObjects released Elements 10.
    • December 27, JetBrains shipped Rider 2017.3, which features many debugging improvements, and other new additions to the development experience.

    2016

    New Era

    • January 13, JetBrains announced Project Rider at NDC London conference, an IntelliJ based cross platform C# IDE.
    • January 19, Microsoft renamed new platforms to .NET Core 1.0 and ASP.NET Core 1.0.
    • February 24, Microsoft acquired Xamarin.
    • March 1, Project Rider entered private EAP.
    • March 31, at Build 2016 Microsoft announced the new features of Xamarin platforms, and made it free and open source for all developers.
    • March 31, JetBrains and Unity joined .NET Foundation.
    • March 31, Mono was relicensed under MIT.
    • April 26, Unity published experimental build to run development environment on Linux.
    • April 27, at Evolve 2016, Xamarin SDK became open source at http://open.xamarin.com.
    • May 6, Microsoft announced that .NET Core 1.0 RC2 will be shipped in mid-May, while RTM is expected by the end of June.
    • May 16, Microsoft published .NET Core RC2 and .NET Core SDK Preview 1.
    • June 7, Microsoft announced at dotnetConf that .NET Core 1.0 will be published on June 27 at Red Hat DevNation. 
    • June 8, Xamarin announced Xamarin Studio 6.0, Mono 4.4.0, and other Xamarin Cycle 7 bits at dotnetConf.
    • June 27, Microsoft released .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core 1.0  and .NET Core SDK Preview 2 at Red Hat DevNation.
    • June 27, Samsung joined .NET Foundation, and worked on ARM support.
    • June 27, DevArt released paid EF Core providers for MySQL, Oracle, and many other databases.
    • June 29, Telerik announced that Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC will officially support ASP.NET Core 1.0 by mid-July.
    • July 2, #SNMP Library started to support .NET Core 1.0 RTM.
    • July 14, Telerik announced ASP.NET Core 1.0 full support.
    • July 14, JetBrains updated Project Rider with .NET Core 1.0 RTM support.
    • July 15, Microsoft revealed roadmap for .NET Core 1.0.1 and above.
    • July 29, Microsoft revealed roadmap for Entity Framework Core 1.1.
    • August 2, Xamarin announced support for .NET Standard Library.
    • August 2, Microsoft shipped .NET Framework 4.6.2, which meets .NET Standard 1.5.
    • August 10, DevExpress released CodeRush for Roslyn 16 official release.
    • August 18, Google Cloud announced ASP.NET support. ASP.NET Core support would be provided soon.
    • August 18, PowerShell became open source and cross platform. This is powered by .NET Core.
    • August 18, JetBrains released ReSharper 2016.2 with ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0 support.
    • August 30, Unity 5.5 Beta becomes public, and the C# compiler has been upgraded to the latest.
    • September 13, Microsoft released September 2016 Update for .NET Core (1.0.1).
    • September 13, Xamarin released major updates to support iOS 10 and Android 7. iOS Simulator on Windows and Xamarin Forms Previewer are shipped as Preview.
    • October 25, Microsoft released .NET Core 1.1.0 Preview 1.
    • November 16, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2017 RC and .NET Core 1.1.0, as well as Visual Studio for Mac Preview and Visual Studio Mobile Center Preview.
    • November 16, Google joined .NET Foundation.
    • November 16, Xamarin released a few GA products, including Remote iOS Simulator, Xamarin Profiler, Xamarin Inspector, and Xamarin Workbooks. Xamarin Test Cloud also addedJava support via Appium.
    • November 16, Samsung released Visual Studio Tools for Tizen, bringing .NET Core and Xamarin.Forms to Tizen devices.
    • November 21, JetBrains made Rider IDE Early Access Program public.
    • December 6, Xamarin released Visual Studio for Mac Preview 2.
    • December 12, Microsoft shipped an updated version of Visual Studio 2017 RC.
    • December 13, Microsoft published .NET Core 1.0.3.

    2015

    Turnaround

    • January 10, Roslyn moved from CodePlex to GitHub.
    • January 13, F# moved from CodePlex to GitHub.
    • January 21, Microsoft announced Windows 10 Mobile.
    • February 3, .NET CoreCLR repo appeared at GitHub.
    • March 18, Microsoft open sourced MSBuild by Xamarin's request.
    • April 29, Microsoft announced Visual Studio Code, a cross platform code editor.
    • April 29, Mono 4.0 was released with hundreds of classes from Microsoft open source code.
    • April 30, RemObjects released its Swift compiler, aka Silver.
    • July 20, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.6 and Visual Studio 2015.
    • July 29, Microsoft released Windows 10, introducing Universal Windows Platform.
    • August 11, NuGet moved from CodePlex to GitHub.
    • November 17, Xamarin 4 was released. Xamarin.Forms 2.0 added some Windows support.
    • November 18, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.6.1 and Visual Studio 2015 Update 1.
    • November 18, Microsoft open sourced Visual Studio Code.
    • November 18, Microsoft released .NET Core 5 and ASP.NET 5 RC 1.
    • November 20, Microsoft released Windows 10 Mobile.

     

    2014

    New Dawn

    • February, Scott Guthrie became Executive Vice President of Cloud & Enterprise.
    • March 2, RemObjects released RemObjects C# with full .NET/Mono, JVM and Objective C runtime support.
    • April 2, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8.1.
    • April 3, Microsoft open sourced C# and VB.NET compiler (Roslyn) under Apache 2.0.
    • April 14, Windows Phone 8.1 was released to developers.
    • April 16, DevExpress announced CodeRush for Roslyn. Mark Miller confirmed that Dustin Campbell led the design of Roslyn after leaving DevExpress for Microsoft.
    • May 5, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.5.2.
    • May 14, ASP.NET source code moved from CodePlex to GitHub.
    • May 28, Xamarin 3.0 was released with visual designer for iOS. Xamarin.Forms was released as a new way to write cross platform mobile applications. F# was added to Xamarin platforms.
    • July 2, Microsoft acquired SyntaxTree to get UnityVS.
    • July 21, TypeScript moved from CodePlex to GitHub.
    • July 24, RemObjects announced its plan to port Swift to .NET Framework and Mono.
    • November 12, Microsoft announced that it would release .NET Core as open source at GitHub. .NET Framework reference code also became open source. 

    2013

    Silence Before The Storm

    • February 20, Xamarin released Xamarin 2.0 with core products rebranding to Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. Xamarin Studio was released which was built upon MonoDevelop.
    • October 17, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.5.1 and Visual Studio 2013.

    2012

    Keep The Momentum

    • February 22, SyntaxTree announced UnityVS.
    • March 28, Microsoft open sourced the ASP.NET web stack under Apache 2.0.
    • May 1, Xamarin released the XobotOS project, an Android fork with Mono replacing Dalvik.
    • May 14, Mono for Android 4.2 was released, with visual designer for Android applications.
    • June 20, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8.
    • June 27, Google released Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).
    • July 19, Microsoft open sourced Entity Framework.
    • August 1, Microsoft released Windows 8, introducing Windows Runtime.
    • August 15, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012.
    • August 22, SyntaxTree released Visual Studio Tools for Unity (UnityVS) 1.0.
    • September 12, Apple announced iPhone 5 and iOS 6.
    • September 20, MonoTouch 6.0 was released with full iOS 6 support.
    • September 21, iPhone 5 with iOS 6 was shipped.
    • October 9, Microsoft announced that Sandcastle would be transferred to Eric Woodruff.
    • October 19, Mono 3.0 was released, with Microsoft open source stack added.
    • October 29, Google released Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean).
    • October 29, Windows Phone 8 was released.
    • December 12, Xamarin released Xamarin.Mac to support OS X desktop application development.

    2011

    Reborn From The Ashes

    • January 3, Microsoft open sourced NuGet.
    • February 1, Red Gate announced that .NET Reflector would become a commercial product.
    • February 15, Moonlight 4.0 Preview was released.
    • February 15, Mono 2.10 was released with Google Native Client support and VB.NET.
    • February 16, SharpDevelop team announced ILSpy, an open source alternative for .NET Reflector.
    • February 22, Shaun Wilde started OpenCover, an open source alternative for NCover.
    • February 22, Google released Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).
    • March 17, MonoMac 1.0 was released.
    • April 6, Mono for Android 1.0 was released with Android 2.2 support.
    • April 6, MonoTouch 4.0 was released.
    • April 18, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.0.1.
    • May 2, Attachmate laid off Mono team.
    • May 16, Xamarin was launched by core Mono team.
    • May 25, Miguel de Icaza announced that Nat Friedman would be CEO of Xamarin.
    • July 18, SUSE and Xamarin announced collaboration. Xamarin received all rights on MonoTouch and Mono for Android.
    • October 4, Apple announced iPhone 4S and iOS 5.
    • October 5, Steve Jobs passed away.
    • October 12, MonoTouch 5 was released with full iOS 5 support.
    • October 14, iPhone 4S was shipped with iOS 5.
    • October 19, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.0.2.
    • October 19, Google released Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
    • October, Jb Evain founded SyntaxTree.
    • December 5, Mono for Android 4.0 was released with Android 3 and 4 support.
    • December 9, Microsoft released Silverlight 5.0.
    • December, Miguel de Icaza announced that Moonlight project ended.

    2010

    One Step Closer

    • January 27, Apple announced iPad.
    • February 3, Moonlight 3.0 Preview was released.
    • February 15, Windows Phone 7 was released.
    • April 3, iPad was shipped with iOS 3.2.
    • April 7, Novell released MonoTouch 2.0 with full support to iPad.
    • April 12, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.
    • April 15, Microsoft released Silverlight 4.0.
    • April 16, Microsoft open sourced Dynamic Language Runtime under MS-PL.
    • April 16, MonoTouch 3.0 started beta testing.
    • May 20, Google released Android 2.2 (Froyo).
    • June 7, Apple announced iPhone 4.
    • June 23, MonoTouch 3.0.8 was released with full support of iOS 4.
    • June 24, iPhone 4 was shipped with iOS 4.
    • July 17, Microsoft relicensed DLR under Apache 2.0.
    • July, MonoDroid was announced and private beta testing started.
    • October 5, Mono 2.8 was released with C# 4.0 and some .NET Framework 4.0 features.
    • October 21, Windows Phone 7 phones started to ship.
    • November 4, Microsoft open sourced F# compiler and runtime under Apache 2.0.
    • December 6, Google released Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).
    • December, Mono for Android started public beta testing.

    2009

    New Landscape on Mobile

    • January 9, Mono 2.2 was released. SIMD support was added to meet Unity3D's demand. C# Shell became an official feature.
    • February 12, Moonlight 1.0 was released as a collaboration between the Mono project and Microsoft.
    • March 20, Unity3D released Unity 2.5 which supports development environment on Windows.
    • April 2, Microsoft open sourced ASP.NET MVC under MS-PL.
    • April 27, NancyFx project started.
    • April 27, Google released Android 1.5 (Capcake).
    • June 8, Apple announced iPhone 3GS.
    • June 19, iPhone 3GS was shipped.
    • June 25, Richard Stallman wrote about his concerns on Mono.
    • July 9, Microsoft released Silverlight 3.0.
    • September 2, MonoGame was released.
    • September 14, Novell released MonoTouch 1.0 after beta testing. Via AOT, C# applications can be submitted to iOS App Store.
    • September 15, Google released Android 1.6 (Donut).
    • October 23, Google released Android 2.1 (Eclair).
    • December 14, Mono 2.6 was released. LINQ to SQL was added. Basic WCF client and server support was added to work with Moonlight. xbuild was added.
    • December 17, Moonlight 2.0 was released.

    2008

    Together We Are Strong

    • February 26, Miguel de Icaza announced the collaboration between Mono and Unity3D.
    • February, Scott Guthrie became Corporate Vice President within the Developer Division.
    • March 6, iPhone SDK was released.
    • March 31, Unity3D announced that it would support iPhone.
    • April 26, #SNMP Library project started.
    • May 15, Microsoft open sourced Enterprise Libraries 4.0.
    • May 30, RemObjects released Oxygene 3.0 (originally named as Chrome), with full MonoDevelop support.
    • June 9, Apple announced iPhone 3G.
    • July 2, Microsoft open sourced Sandcastle.
    • July 11, iPhone 3G was shipped, with iPhone 2.0. App Store was launched.
    • August 11, Microsoft released .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.
    • August 20, Red Gate acquired .NET Reflector.
    • October 1, Mono 2.0 was released.
    • October 2, Microsoft open sourced Managed Extension Framework.
    • October 3, Unity3D announced its iPhone product, Unity iPhone, which was based on Mono AOT.
    • October 14, Microsoft released Silverlight 2.0.
    • October 22, HTC Dream was shipped as the first Android phone.
    • October 29, Microsoft revealed more about .NET Framework 4.0 (including the Roslyn project) at PDC.
    • October 29, Miguel de Icaza talked about Mono at PDC, and revealed C# Shell, which is quite similar to Roslyn.
    • December 16, Unity3D published Unity iPhone 1.0.1.

    2007

    Paradigm Shift to Mobile

    • January 9, Apple announced iPhone.
    • April 19, Microsoft released .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1.
    • May, Jb Evain left db4objects, Inc and joined Novell Mono team.
    • June 29, iPhone started to ship.
    • July 21, Scott Hanselman announced that he would join Microsoft in August.
    • August 1, RemObjects released Chrome 2.0, with full support of .NET Framework 3.0, and some support of .NET Framework 3.5.
    • September 5, Microsoft released Silverlight 1.0, bringing .NET to the web browsers.
    • September 17, NCover became a closed source product.
    • September 19, Brad Wilson and Jim Newkirk released xUnit.net 1.0 Beta 1.
    • October 3, Microsoft published some of .NET Framework source code under a reference license (not OSI compliant).
    • October 17, Apple announced the iPhone SDK.
    • November 5, Google announced its Android mobile platform.
    • November 19, Microsoft released .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

    2006

    Changes From The Giant

    • June 27, Microsoft officially launched CodePlex, an open source project hosting portal.
    • July 26, NDoc project stopped.
    • July 29, Microsoft released Sandcastle CTP, a tool similar to NDoc.
    • November 2, Mono 1.2 was released, with cross platform Windows Forms support added. AOT became an official feature.
    • November 2, Novell and Microsoft announced further collaboration and patent grants.
    • November 6, Microsoft released .NET Framework 3.0, introducing WPF, WCF and WF.
    • November 14, Microsoft announced PowerShell 1.0 at ITForum in Barcelona.

    2005

    Uphill Climb

    • April 18, Microsoft released .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2.
    • May 1, RemObjects released Chrome 1.0, a Pascal dialect that is quite similar to C# and supports both .NET Framework and Mono.
    • June 8, Unity3D game engine was launched.
    • October 10, Borland released Delphi 2006.
    • November, Scott Guthrie became General Manager of Develop Division.
    • November 7, Microsoft released .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
    • November 7, RemObjects released Chrome 1.5, with full support for .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

    2004

    Burst of The Community

    • January, Peter Waldschmidt started to publish NCover, a unit test coverage tool.
    • January, Delphi guru Chuck Jazdzewski left Borland for Microsoft, and participated in the design of WPF. 
    • January 28, Microsoft released Enterprise Libraries.
    • February 4, MonoDevelop 0.1 was released, a port of SharpDevelop to Mono.
    • February, Neoworks Limited donated log4net to Apache Foundation.
    • February, Borland CTO Blake Stone quit and joined Microsoft, also participated in WPF.
    • March 24, Microsoft debut the XNA framework.
    • March 25, DevExpress released CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET.
    • April 2, Microsoft and SUN announced further collaboration and ended related law suits.
    • April 5, Microsoft released WiX at SourceForge as its first open source project.
    • April 26, Patrick Smacchia released NDepend 1.0.
    • June 30, Mono 1.0 was released after three years of development.
    • July 3, Microsoft released .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 1. MSBuild and MSTest was introduced.
    • July 22, JetBrains released ReSharper 1.0.
    • October 12, Borland released Delphi 2005, with both Delphi for .NET and C#Builder upgrade.

    2003

    Fast Growing Community

    • February, DevExpress acquired CodeRush. Mark Miller started to develop CodeRush for Visual Studio.
    • April 3, Microsoft released .NET Framework 1.1 along with Visual Studio .NET 2003.
    • April 5, Mono project started to develop Ahead of Time compilation.
    • May 6, Borland announced C#Builder.
    • June 6, Borland released C#Builder 1.0.
    • August 4, Novell acquired Ximian.
    • December 22, Borland released Delphi 8 for .NET.

    2002

    Senior Year

    • February 13, Microsoft released .NET Framework 1.0 and Visual Studio .NET 2002.
    • June 19, Jeroen Frijiters started to develop IKVM.NET, an open source JVM on .NET and Mono.
    • June 30, most of Mono 1.0 initiatives were met, and self hosting was achieved.
    • July 11, Jim Newkirk started to develop NUnit 2.0, which uses many C#/.NET features such as attributes.
    • August, Borland released Delphi 7. Its installation media contains Delphi for .NET compiler preview. 

    2001

    Junior Year

    • January, Helix Code renamed to Ximian.
    • January, Lutz Roeder started to publish his .NET Reflector.
    • January, the law suit between SUN and Microsoft was settled. Microsoft could then focus on developing .NET.
    • January, Scott Guthrie became Product Unit Manager of Web Platform and Tools.
    • April, Miguel de Icaza demonstrated the initial work on Mono at GUADEC 2001 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The C# compiler could compile itself.
    • May 3, Microsoft announced and kicked off its Shared Source project, allowing users to view source code of its products under certain restrictions.
    • June 30, Miguel de Icaza publicly announced the Mono project, to bring C# and .NET to Linux and other platforms.
    • June, Neoworks Limited started to develop log4net, a clone of log4j from Java.
    • July 5, Gerry Shaw started the NAnt project, a clone of Ant from Java.
    • September 29, Kral Ferch, Jason Diamond, and others started the NDoc project, a clone of JavaDoc from Java.
    • October, Stanley Lippman joined Microsoft to lead Visual C++.

    2000

    Preview Time

    • June 22, Microsoft debut its .NET Platform on Forum 2000.
    • June, Philip Craig demonstrated the prototype of NUnit, a clone of JUnit on Java platform.
    • July 11, Microsoft published the first preview build of .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET at PDC, revealing the C# programming language. Anders Hejlsberg led the design works of C#, another important language after his previous work, Delphi.
    • August, Microsoft, HP and Intel co-sponsored the submission of specifications for the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and C# programming language to ECMA.
    • September 11, Mike Kruger started the SharpDevelop project, an open source C# IDE.
    • December, Miguel de Icaza started to work on the upcoming Mono project (the byte code interpreter), during a trip to Mexico.

    1999

    Preparation for New Technology

    • October, Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza founded Helix Code, a firm dedicated to GNOME desktop application development.
    • November, Scott Guthrie became Lead Program Manager on ASP.NET.

    1998

    J++ 6 and WFC

    • October 6, Microsoft released Visual J++ 6.0, which features Microsoft Foundation Classes for rapid Windows application development.

    1997

    The Start of J++

    • January, Microsoft released Visual J++ 1.0. Due to a bug in the installation media, it could not be installed on Windows 95. Microsoft promised to resolve that very soon.
    • March 3, Microsoft released Visual J++ 1.1, a free upgrade for all J++ users.
    • May, Scott Guthrie graduated from Duke University and joined Microsoft.
    • August, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena started the GNOME project, aiming to build an open source desktop environment for Linux, to replace KDE who relies on the closed source Qt library.
    • October, SUN sued Microsoft and asked Microsoft to follow Java specification in its J++ product line.

    1996

    Entering Java Land

    • March 12, Microsoft licensed Java from SUN.
    • October 15, Microsoft released SDK for Java.
    • November, Anders Hejlsberg joined Microsoft after leaving Borland. Borland sued Microsoft for mind drain later.

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