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Comment by danparsonson | Hacker News Reader

I have to agree that it's excessive and I don't understand why they're doing it. Major versions imply breaking changes, which contradicts the assertions of other people here replying that the differences between each version are minor; in that case why not minor version bumps? What's the benefit? The only thing I can think of is that it forces upgrades to new versions of Visual Studio.

One immediate problem it creates is with recruitment - between 2019 and 2021 we went from .NET Core 3.0, through 3.1, .NET 5, and now .NET 6, and suddenly in the space of one job I went from up-to-date to 'legacy CV'.

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The annual cadence simplifies our planning— we can preview features a year ahead and prepare for the LTS release. It also shortens the feedback cycle for Microsoft which has to be useful.

From a recruiting standpoint, it allows me to start conversations. I don’t take points off if candidates haven’t worked on the latest version, but one of my go-to questions is “What features in .NET X are you looking forward to using?”.

In an industry of constant change, it’s a negative signal if you don’t know anything about the current version of the platforms you use. Many, many candidates don’t.

Why would you list the .NET version on your CV? Why would anyone hiring care about whether you have experience with .NET 6 vs .NET 3

Do you also list all the library versions you've worked with?

This is pretty absurd.

The .NET framework has changed a great deal between versions 1 and 6, so I don't agree that it's sufficient just to say that I am experienced with .NET and leave it at that, nor is it equivalent to listing library versions. Besides I'm a contractor; potential customers are usually looking for someone who can hit the ground running, not spend a month skilling up.

If a recruiter denies you because you have .NET 6 on your resume instead of .NET 7 then that probably isn't a very lucrative job in the first place. You don't need a month of skill up to go from 6 to 7, maybe like 10 minutes.

Personally I'd just say .NET in general and leave the specifics to the interview.

It’s a minor signal, but it’s still a signal.

If someone only lists “Angular”, it could be Angular 4 from 2016 or something more relevant.

Same thing with .NET— the version can imply Windows-related experience (.NET Framework) vs. something more cloud native (.NET 6).

I guess it's useful to know whether or not a candidate is 15 years out of date. We had a guy come through who knew classic ASP and I'm told it was a painful interview.

Major versions do include breaking changes in some libraries. You usually keep all Microsoft libraries aligned on the same major version to ensure compatibility, and it allows Microsoft to introduce these breaking changes on a regular basis without causing any confusion. If you're on .NET 6, most of your Microsoft nugets are on 6.xx.xx.

It gets really weird when you have one dependency including .NET 6 version, and another including .NET 5, since they sometimes rework nuget packages with how many Microsoft.Extensions they have now.

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