So Microsoft is coming out with a new version of the ASP.NET framework, and I am excited! Here’s why:

1. It’s open-source. That’s awesome, and a pretty radical shift for Microsoft.
2. Web Forms are going away. Need I say more?
3. It’s cross-platform. Meaning it can now run on Linux, yay! (Mac too, for you Apple fans.)
4. It’s lightweight and modular. No word yet on just how much more so, but it looks promising.
5. It’s got more support for front-end stuff. Grunt, Gulp, Bower, NPM… it’s all supported.
6. Dependency injection! This is now baked straight in to ASP.NET; you don’t have to use third-party frameworks. This is probably the change I’m looking forward to the most.

For you other .NET nerds, do you plan on giving the beta version a try?

Edit: As of January 2016 (really November 2015, but I’m late to updating), ASP.NET 5 Release Candidate (RC) 1 is out! We’ve been using this on a project at my work, and it is fantastic. Still a few things to iron out (for example, we encountered a few snafus in publishing to IIS) but overall I am really happy with the new features and overall direction the framework has gone in.

Here’s a link to the current documentation: http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/conceptual-overview/aspnet.html