DEV Community

Cover image for Must-have resources for new .NET Aspire developers
Anthony Simmon
Anthony Simmon

Posted on • Originally published at anthonysimmon.com

Must-have resources for new .NET Aspire developers

Six months after its first preview released during .NET Conf 2023, .NET Aspire becomes generally available (GA) at Microsoft Build 2024. This project, which aims to revolutionize the local development of distributed applications, has unfortunately been overlooked by some due to its preview status. This is good news for those who can now embark on the adventure. Here are some resources to learn how to use .NET Aspire.

.NET Aspire official documentation

The best place to start learning .NET Aspire is the official documentation. It includes an overview, a quickstart guide, dives into conceptual details and much more.

Official videos on the Microsoft YouTube channels

Not a fan of reading? Microsoft has published videos throughout the development of .NET Aspire. You can understand what problem it tries to solve, how the .NET team arrived at this solution, how to use it, and what the vision for the future is.

Official code samples on GitHub

The official samples repository contains valuable examples and demonstrates a small portion of the possibilities offered by .NET Aspire:

  • A real-world example of a distributed application with microservices,
  • JavaScript frontends and Node.js backends integration,
  • Desktop apps integration,
  • Various databases integration,
  • Dapr integration and more.

Community videos

.NET Aspire has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the community. Here are some videos from developers who have experimented with .NET Aspire and share their experiences.

David Fowler's experiments on GitHub

Do you want deep technical content about .NET Aspire? Watch how David Fowler pushes the limits of the .NET Aspire application model in these advanced scenarios. In my opinion, some of this content should be integrated into .NET Aspire.

My blog posts

Since the launch of .NET Aspire, I've written several articles on the subject. Here are some of my favorites:

More blog posts, online resources and projects

There are many other online resources to learn .NET Aspire. Here are some of my recommendations:

Social networks

If you want to stay updated with the latest news on .NET Aspire and discover what the community is building with it, I recommend following the news on X: #aspire and more recently #dotnetaspire.

You can also follow the people who work closely on .NET Aspire:

.NET Aspire's source code

The .NET Aspire repository on GitHub is the source of truth for understanding how it works. I strongly encourage you to explore it in your browser or in your IDE via SourceLink.


Cover picture, from left to right: .NET Aspire documentation, David Fowler and Damian Edwards during an ASP.NET Community Standup, Aspireify.NET and Nick Chapsas on YouTube.

Top comments (0)