What is .NET Standard?

The .NET Standard is a set of APIs that resolves the problems of code sharing while you’re trying to write cross-platform applications. Currently, Microsoft is working on .NET Standard 2.0 to make it streamlined, and these standards will be implemented by all, that is, .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Xamarin. With the use of .NET Standard (that is a set of APIs), you are ensuring that your program and class library will be available for all targeted .NET Frameworks and .NET Core. In other words, .NET Standard will replace Portable Class Libraries (PCL). For more information, refer to https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/09/26/introducing-net-standard/.

Till now, you've got an idea of .NET Core and a few other things that help build cross-platform applications. In the coming sections, we will prepare the environment in order to start learning the C# language using Visual Studio 2017 (preferably the community edition).