.NET Core stopped being called .NET Core at version 3, after which it was renamed .NET, and Microsoft announced it was meant to supersede the old legacy .NET Framework. The article opens with asking itself how to get the smallest .NET executable, and then for some reason limits itself to this legacy version.

> Microsoft announced it was meant to supersede the old legacy .NET Framework

What actually never happened, to nobody's surprise.

So now we have .Net that was renamed into .Net Framework that is legacy, .Net Core that is legacy but compatible with the modern version, and .Net that is current. Anyway, the platform never stopped being called .Net, because it's larger than just the runtime.

We also have 2 different number sequences starting from 1, and one starting from... some times 4, other times 6, depends on your point of view.

We also have a bunch of confused people without any reason, because all of this is as clear as water. But anyway, it's not the author fault that he didn't communicate the version in an adequate way.

> .Net that was renamed into .Net Framework

This is not correct. .NET Framework was named Framework from 1.0. The only time something was renamed is .NET 5 which came after .NET Core 3.1.

> We also have a bunch of confused people without any reason, because all of this is as clear as water.

It's funny you say that. Do you consider yourself one of those confused people? :)

Haha, the burn.

I remember back in the day - around 2001 - Microsoft thought it will center all their products around Web Services and call them .NET. Windows .NET Server was the supposed name for Server 2003. In the end a few things came out of it: Visual Studio .NET, .NET (the framework), VB.NET, ASP.NET.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_strategy

> Do you consider yourself one of those confused people?

Yes. I have never took place in a conversation about versioning problems in .Net where each person wasn't talking about completely different things.

Anyway, I clearly remember nobody ever naming anything "framework" until the second or third stable version. And if there was such a thing, I would probably have heard, because MS was incredibly loud at the time.

It was retroactively renamed after it.

As I recall it, even 1.0 was always referred to as .NET Framework. There was a million .NET "brands" from Microsoft when .NET Framework launched. .NET was the overall "initiative" and .NET Framework was only one in that "portfolio". Then Microsoft got bored with most of the other ".NET brands" and .NET Framework was last .NET standing. It wasn't until 2.0 or so that I recall people felt safe calling .NET Framework just ".NET" without feeling confused about other .NET branded things. Microsoft's own branding advice never dropped "Framework" from .NET Framework even deep into the 4.x timeframe so long divorced from "the initiative" and no other remaining uses of .NET as a brand.

It didn't start from 4 but 5. they skipped 4 because people would confuse it for .net framework

> What actually never happened, to nobody's surprise.

Unless they provide feature parity, it will never happen.

A working WinForms designer for third-party controls (read: any control not provided by the framework itself or NDA-ed vendors) in Visual Studio would be nice, for example.

.NET Framework 4.x is built into Windows, and .NET Framework 4.x binaries are understood by the Windows executable loader. The modern .NET must be manually installed and the executables must take care of launching the runtime on their own.