Visual Studio 2019 has been released for Windows and macOS. However, .NET Core 3.0 and C# 8 are still in preview, coming later this year. These IDEs are both interesting if you’re a Windows or mac person but if you’re more into Linux and the web then there’s not a huge amount to see.
The next major version of .NET Core does not yet have a release date (it will be announced in May) and it focuses on adding Windows desktop app support (Win Forms, WPF and UWP), which will be open sourced. I like desktop apps but I think we need a fully cross-platform technology for them (and I don’t mean Electron or Qt). Maybe the open source Windows UI frameworks can help here?
In addition to the .NET Core 3.0 preview there is also support for a preview of C# 8.0, which can help you avoid null reference exceptions (the billion-dollar mistake). I’ll write more about both of these another time, once the releases are finalised.
The version of ASP.NET Core that ships with Visual Studio 2019 (2.2) is a minor release for the web framework. There aren’t too many new features from a web app development point-of-view. However, there are updated templates for Angular 6 / Bootstrap 4 and HTTP2 is also optionally supported.
For this reason, I’m not releasing a new version of my book. I think the current second edition is still relevant for the latest release of ASP.NET Core and web development in general. For example, it already covers high performance technologies such as HTTP2.