.NET Development

At Takeoff Digital we develop websites, web apps, mobile apps and CRMs in a multitude of technologies. We pride ourselves on using the right technology to suit the project and quite often our preference is .NET.

We enjoy working with .NET for a number of reasons; it is cross platform, has built-in security and performance features, it is open source, it is flexible and cost effective, it is created by Microsoft. In addition to this .NET Core is a popular and mature framework and because of its wide adoption there is a large and active community of developers working on further enhancements.

At Takeoff Digital we are a .NET agency passionate about using the latest Microsoft technologies, methodologies and processes to design and develop applications.

For a bespoke project we usually utilise the .NET Core MVC framework and build the application in a MVC pattern to decouple user-interface (view), data (model), and application logic (controller) to ensure the application is lightweight, highly testable, to the latest web standards and to enable a clean separation of concerns.

To ensure a fast, scalable and interoperable architecture we build .NET web applications in a MVC ‘Clean Architecture’ where the user interface, data sources, third party services and application core are separated.

Tailored Software Development

Tailored software development involves creating software applications specifically designed to serve a particular purpose or user group within your organization. This approach addresses your needs more accurately compared to conventional, off-the-shelf software. Custom applications are typically developed exclusively for your organization and are not intended for resale.

Custom software development involves planning, developing, and deploying a software product with a specific need in mind. The software is designed considering the company’s infrastructure, branding, and implementation requirements, ensuring its uniqueness to that particular organization.

Software Maintenance Solutions

Takeoff offers corrective, preventive, and enhancement maintenance services, allowing clients to benefit from a refined process aimed at boosting the adoption of internal software tools while minimizing reactive maintenance efforts for the client’s application portfolio developed by Dotware.

You can develop a roadmap, and Dotware assists you in pursuing your objectives systematically.

Our team collaborates closely with your users to gain a comprehensive understanding of the solution, maximizing its potential, and making the most of its features.

Why choose Takeoff Digital for .NET Development?

Personalized Solutions

Off-the-shelf software solutions may not always be an ideal match for your organization's needs. Custom software, designed according to your specifications, mitigates the risk of implementation failure, assuming it is developed by a competent team with a thorough understanding of your requirements.

Cost Effective

While the initial costs of developing a custom software solution may be high, the investment pays off over time. Custom software doesn't necessitate continuous modifications or development to meet organizational needs since the solution is specifically tailored for your company, rather than being a one-size-fits-all version for multiple businesses. As a result, custom software can be utilized with minimal investment over an extended period.

Enhanced Security

Popular and widely adopted software solutions are more susceptible to hacking, as they are publicly accessible and hackers can exploit known vulnerabilities to compromise their security. By contrast, software developed specifically for your organization reduces the likelihood of intrusion, providing a more secure environment.

Seamless Integration

In today's business landscape, software plays a crucial role in the operation of organizations. Custom software development takes into account the integration of new solutions with the existing software and hardware infrastructure of the company, ensuring seamless compatibility. In contrast, off-the-shelf solutions often encounter difficulties when attempting to integrate with various tools already in use within an organization.

Adaptable

Custom software provides the flexibility to scale your application according to your solution roadmap and at your preferred pace. As your company's needs evolve, custom software can be adjusted accordingly. On the other hand, modifying packaged solutions is challenging due to the need for maintaining stability while serving a large customer base. Over time, it becomes more cumbersome and costly to adapt your business to off-the-shelf solutions, rather than tailoring the software to your unique requirements.

Expert .NET Development

Our team of experts possesses proficiency in crafting software solutions, leveraging the comprehensive Microsoft .NET framework technology suite to cater to diverse business requirements. Technology stack used on Microsoft environment:

• ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC with HTML5 support
• ASP.NET SPA (Single Page Applications)
• Web API
• Windows Forms
• Windows Communication Foundation (WPF/XAML)
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF)
• Synchronization Framework
• ADO.NET
• Microsoft Office integration applications
• .NET web services

What we do

We develop .NET solutions using C#, VB.NET, HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and PowerShell. And we implement .NET standards, .NET best practices and .NET communication protocols to build modern, reliable, flexible and secure products using:
• OAuth/OpenID/LDAP/Windows Live ID
• AJAX
• SOAP
• REST
• OData
• JSON
• ORM solutions/ ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF)
• LINQ
• SQL Server & SQL Server Reporting Services

Frequently, our team employs the .NET framework stack for backend development, seamlessly integrating it with various front-end/client-side technologies. We are consistently ready to undertake new projects and apply our Microsoft .NET expertise. By blending innovation and technical prowess, we provide tailored Microsoft .NET applications that are secure, dependable, and surpass our clients’ expectations.
Additionally, we provide support for pre-existing software applications built on the Microsoft platform. Our expert technical engineers possess the ability to comprehend ongoing business operations and ensure seamless continuity within a secure framework.

What is .NET?

.NET is an open source developer platform that was created by Microsoft for various types of applications. It’s free and can be built using multiple languages, such as C#, F# and Virtual Basic. It can also be built in different editors and libraries for web apps, mobile apps, desktop, games and IoT. No matter what language you use for your app, your code will run natively on any compatible operating system.

.NET is the implementation for websites, servers and console apps, while the .NET Framework supports websites, services, desktop apps and more on Windows. Xamarin/Mono is a .NET implementation for running apps on major mobile operating systems.

There are a lot of implementations of .NET, so the .NET standard is a formal specification of APIs that are common across the different places where .NET code can be executed, which includes Android, iOS, Windows and macOS among others.

The .NET standard ensures that .NET code can be written on any .NET application, including mobile, desktop, IoT or web. There are various .NET standard versions with different APIs. Older versions allow for fewer APIs to be used, but this means the libraries can run in more places. Newer versions though, contain the potential for more APIs but won’t be adopted by as many users if they haven’t upgraded their versions of .NET.

There are thousands of packages that have been built using the .NET standard to extend functionality, and NuGet is a package manager that contains over 90,000 of them. This gallery of packages can be used by developers to speed up a .NET project and share ideas within this community.

There are lots of different types of app that can be built with .NET cross-platform or on a specific platform. The app models include:

Web – Web apps can be built for Windows, Linux, macOS and Docker
Mobile – A single codebase can be used to build native apps in iOS, Android and Windows
Desktop – .NET creates intuitive and visually appealing desktop apps for Windows and macOS
Cloud – You can use .NET with existing Cloud services, or you can create your own
Microservices – Independently deployable microservices through containers in Docker can be created
Internet of Things – You can make IoT apps with native support
Machine learning – You can use .NET to add speech processing, predictive models, vision algorithms and more
Game development – You can develop 2D and 3D games for desktops, phones and consoles

The fact that .NET is open source opens collaboration with other developers, maximising the potential that .NET can bring to your platform. There are thousands of developers and companies that contribute to the .NET Foundation – an independent organisation that encourages the exchange of ideas and gives developers quick answers on a range of topics, thanks to the active number of developers within the .NET community.

Why choose .NET?

There are lots of companies around the world in a vast array of industries that harness the power of .NET. It helps developers to build high quality applications faster, ensuring greater productivity, through modern language constructs such as generics, asynchronous programming and Language Integrated Query.

Combining these through extensive libraries, APIs and full support, as well as the superb tools through the Visual Studio family, .NET provides one of the most productive platforms that a developer can use. .NET gives developers the ability to target any app on any platform. Skills and code can be reused across all app types, resulting in quicker build times and reduced costs.

.NET was ranked as number one in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, which goes to show why this innovative and open-source development platform is so popular among developers.

Its performance is also impressive. According to TechEmpower (a benchmark which compares web application frameworks with carrying out tasks such as database access and server side template rendering), .NET performs faster than any other popular framework.

Microsoft officially supports the .NET platform, which further highlights the trust that thousands of companies and organisations all over the world place in it. Security is outstanding in this framework and Microsoft regularly releases updates, especially when threats are discovered.

The number of blue-chip companies that use .NET is extraordinary. UPS, food giants Chipotle, Alaska Airlines, BBC Good Food, Just Giving, the American Cancer Society, GoDaddy and a host of others utilise the flexibility of .NET to maximise performance and reduce time and costs in building high quality apps.

How do I learn more about .NET?

There are over 5 million .NET developers all over the world, which is why the wonderful .NET community is such a great resource for developers to ask questions of other developers, and gain insight and ideas into what other functions .NET can be used to perform.

Libraries from the NuGet package manager and Visual Studio Marketplace can be leveraged to find answers to any challenges that will stump you. The .NET developer community includes:

.NET Live TV – A weekly show on Twitch and YouTube with casual conversations that include community content, Q&As and demos
Blogs – For detailed content on a specific subject, .NET, the .NET Foundation, ASP.NET for web development and Xamarin for mobile development are great places to explore, while the ASP.NET community blog and Planet Xamarin provides community blogs on .NET development
Events – You can find .NET meetups to learn the latest tricks and tips and meet like-minded developers. There are also conferences and events you can attend, as well as virtual user groups
GitHub – The perfect start point for .NET open-source projects from Microsoft and the wider .NET community, with advice for mobile development, web development and data access projects
Gitter – Messaging and collaboration can take place for GitHub projects, providing a superb place for developers to get in touch with the .NET team
Stack overflow – This resource is a site where developers can ask general questions in regards to programming
YouTube – The .NET, .NET Foundation, Microsoft Developer, Xamarin and Visual Studio are channels you can follow
Community forums – The best place for technical discussions, how-to guides and best practice for .NET projects across mobile, web, desktop and Cloud platforms
Microsoft Q&A – If you have technical questions that needs technical answers for building apps, this is the place to go
Social media – Twitter and Facebook includes regular updates on new features and releases
Podcasts – Shows focus on APIs, tooling and projects of interest that are being created through .NET
Twitch – Watch developers in action and interact with them through the live coding channels on Twitch
.NET Foundations – The .NET Foundation is an independent organisation that aims to foster open development and collaboration of the .NET ecosystem
F# Software Foundation – Promoting the F# programming language, this independent organisation aims to facilitate the growth and development internationally of F#
C# on Discord – This instant messaging platform provides peer-to-peer discussion among C# developers
Microsoft Support – If the community can’t provide the right answers, you can go directly to a Microsoft Support professional, although you may incur a fee if you need personal help

What tools can I use for .NET?

There are a whole host of tools that you can use for your .NET project across Windows, Linux and macOS. Here are a few different options of current available tools so you can explore what works for you:

Visual Studio – This is a fully integrated development environment (IDE) so that you can build every type of .NET application
Visual Studio Code – You can develop this on macOS, Linux or Windows to build websites and services across many platforms, as well as install the C# extension for optimal experience
Visual Studio for Mac – Download this tool to build native Android, iOS, macOS and Windows apps through Xamarin, as well as websites and services with ASP.NET Core
OmniSharp – This provides cross-platform .NET development in editors such as Atom, Brackets, Emacs, Vim and Sublime Text
JetBrains Rider – This IDE uses IntelliJ and ReSharper technology, offering support apps across all platforms
.NET CLI – The command-line interface (CLI) features the .NET SDK which provides cross-platform development and services on Windows, Linux and macOS.
Ionide – This Visual Studio Code package suite works on Windows, macOS and Linux using the F# programming language

What advantages does .NET being open source give?

.NET consistently ranks among the top 30 for most active open source projects since 2017, according to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

All aspects of .NET are open source and cross-platform and are maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub. Class libraries, languages, compilers, runtime, frameworks and more – everything you need is openly available to you.

Anybody can make a contribution and be a contributor. Any pull requests are reviewed for quality, but also to ensure they run alongside the goals that .NET is used for. Contributions may include improvements to the software, improving existing skills, reporting issues, meeting like-minded people to discuss ideas and more. You can also write bug reports, an API proposal, port files from other projects and make a host of other contributions.

Thus far, more than 100,000 contributions have been made from over 3,700 companies, and that doesn’t even include the improvements and contributions that Microsoft makes in itself!
Different parts of .NET are maintained in various repositories within GitHub. The repositories usually use the MIT or the Apache 2 licence. Certain repositories may licence content under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

As part of the open source nature of .NET, the .NET Foundation aims to support innovative and commercially viable infrastructure around the .NET ecosystem. It’s an independent, not-for-profit organisation and over 50 projects are directly attributed to the foundation. As well as contributions within the .NET community, Microsoft have made significant contributions to the advancement of .NET alongside the likes of Google, Samsung, Red Hat and VMware.

It’s not just the code that is open-source with .NET either. The documentation is open source, as well as the open API review process and community stand-ups. You can even track what’s being built through themesof.net and seek recommendations from the open source library guidance to create the highest quality of .NET libraries. GitHub provides this open source guidance and it’s developed in collaboration with popular library authors.

Developers have the ability to build their own version of .NET from the source code, but most production apps need a supported version of the platform. Microsoft releases official upgrades and versions that are tested and built on platforms such as Azure and supported in the same way as any other Microsoft product.

Microsoft also collaborates with Red Hat, which builds .NET from source and makes it openly available through the .NET download page.

DOTNET Development