November 4th, 2021

Introducing the .NET Tech Community Forums

James Montemagno
Principal Manager, Tech PM

.NET is a unified platform enabling developers to build world class applications across operating systems and platforms. There is a global community of millions of developers building apps with .NET and helping other developers get started with .NET. Last year, we started our journey in unifying .NET communities when it comes to discussions and getting technical help. First, we launched Microsoft Q&A for .NET, a home for technical questions and answers for .NET. This hub has seen huge growth month over month in the number of visitors, questions, and answers from the community and Microsoft employees. We want to thank everyone for being so involved in Q&A which has led to over 80% of questions being answered every month!

We aren’t done yet, as we have heard feedback from our developer community that a space is needed to have more interactions beyond Q&A. You have told us you are looking for a dedicated forum where you have technical discussions, talk about best practices, chat about new releases, and share how-to guidance. That is why we are pleased to announce the .NET Tech Community Forums for all .NET developer topics & discussions!

Tech Community home for .NET

Tech Community Features

No matter if you are a web developer, mobile & desktop developer, into microservices, data, machine learning, or just getting started, there is a discussion space for you! Simply join the .NET tech community, pick a discussion space, start a new discussion, and collaborate with other .NET developers!

New post on a tech community space, Introducing the .NET Tech Community Forums

Follow Topics

Every topic on the .NET Tech Community can be followed so you can get updates through e-mail, RSS feeds, or on your tech community home page.

Join more communities

The best part of the .NET Tech Community is that it is part of the entire Microsoft Tech Community. There are a plethora of product and special topic community hubs that you can join, follow, and start discussions on.

List of hubs on tech community, Introducing the .NET Tech Community Forums

Build your profile and earn achievements

Who doesn’t like getting achievements and kudos for helping out the community and discussing your favorite topics!

Profile on tech community

The new .NET Tech Community will live side-by-side Microsoft Q&A:

  • Microsoft Q&A for .NET – for your technical questions and support
  • .NET Tech Community – for technical discussions, how-to, and more.

The launch of both Tech Community and Q&A help align with all products throughout Microsoft for developers including Azure, Teams, Office, and more that you will find on both platforms.

Check out the .NET Tech Community today!

Author

James Montemagno
Principal Manager, Tech PM

James Montemagno is a Principal Lead Program Manager for Developer Community at Microsoft. He has been a .NET developer since 2005, working in a wide range of industries including game development, printer software, and web services. Prior to becoming a Principal Program Manager, James was a professional mobile developer and has now been crafting apps since 2011 with Xamarin. In his spare time, he is most likely cycling around Seattle or guzzling gallons of coffee at a local coffee shop. He ...

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13 comments

Discussion is closed. Login to edit/delete existing comments.

  • Dalibor ÄŒarapić

    Yet another forum for MS products which will just add to confusion (https://forums.asp.net/, https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/, https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?category=netdevelopment, ... there are probably some more).
    My prediction is:
    - Questions there will probably only get answered by MVPs which have a standard response of something like 'use DISM tool and if that does not help then reinstall everything'.
    - Github will remain the only relevant place where you can view reasons for technical decisions for .NET and report issuesRead more

  • shana kibble · Edited

    Could someone please tell me who/where is the correct place to report issue of two OLD .NET updates showing up (only since November 2, PM Pacific time) in Windows (10) Update? Both of these were installed when then came out. I have had NO luck for the last 3 days convincing Windows Support people that the issue is NOT with my system (I have done bunch of testing for corruption etc with nothing found to...

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  • John King

    I think we do need a place that can let us up vote or down vote for thing like bracking change make in .net before your team drop some features.
    but for Q&A, I recommend using stackoverflow.com instead !!!!!!!!!!

  • dimohy

    I give positive feedback.

    We needed a vibrant .NET community. Community is open! The old Microsoft Q&A forum is a place to answer technical questions, but the quality is questionable.

    Rather, it would be a good answer to get feedback from passionate people who want to be active in an open community. And it is immediately shared with others! And a heated discussion will yield a rough but positive result.

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  • MgSam

    Though I appreciate trying to make improvements, I don't think another forum is needed. MSDN forums usually had/have pretty low-quality questions and answers compared to StackOverflow.

    What's wrong with all the existing avenues on StackOverflow or Github or Gitter or Discord? It's hard enough to get you guys to seriously consider highly voted issues on dotnet/runtime (it took what, 6-7 years of open source .NET before any LINQ changes were even considered?). Speaking with decades of...

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    • James MontemagnoMicrosoft employee Author

      We want to meet developers where they are and encourage everyone to engage where they are hanging out regardless if that is SO, GitHub, Gitter, Discord, Q&A, Tech Community or more (checkout our community hub - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/community).

      What developers will find across Q&A and Tech Community spaces now is that you can easily join and engage with other developers across more products in a single place & feed including .NET, Azure, M365, Surface Duo, Office, and...

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      • Charles Roddie

        StackOverflow/Github/Gitter/Discord have the advantage that they are supported by mobile apps (and 3 of them by desktop apps too). Microsoft forums are trying to run before they can walk. They have built achievements, following, followers, but the basic login experience is poor. My login status is never remembered and I have to manually log in each time I try to post on developercommunity.visualstudio.com or devblogs.microsoft.com .

  • Michael Taylor

    What? Why do we need yet another discussion forum? Earlier this year the MSDN Forums were moved to the Microsoft Q&A forums and everybody was told to post there in a "Stack Overflow"-ish forum. Now there is yet another forum to have Q&A questions.

    What happens to the existing discussions on Q&A? Should devs now be encouraged to post over on this new site rather than the (still new) Q&A forums? How is this going to...

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    • James MontemagnoMicrosoft employee Author

      Q&A is not going away, it lives side by side the Tech Community forums and discussion space. This is similar to other products such as Azure, Office, Surface Duo, etc.

      Q&A is for getting your questions answers and Tech Community is for discussions on topics.

      • Michael Taylor

        That may be your goal but I doubt it'll happen that way. Folks go to Q&A for discussions as much as questions. Whichever one happens to pull up in search first (or they bookmark) is where they will post questions and discussions.

        I'm still having a hard time understanding the technical difference between the two. Webster defines a discussion as "consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate". Discussions start with a question and...

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    • Jason Baginski

      This is why I crossed my eyes when I read “we have heard feedback from our developer community that a space is needed”.