Top 10 Abbreviations Every .NET Developer Should Be Familiar With

In my previous article Top 10 Acronyms Every Developer Should Be Familiar With, I tried to explain the most common abbreviations every developer should be familiar with no matter his further specification. As you know, there are literally thousands of technical abbreviations out there, so I've tried to pick the most important ones from the point of view of a software developer.

Because I consider myself to be a Microsoft enthusiast and most of my experience is based on some Microsoft technology, I also took a look at the abbreviations linked to the Microsoft development world. Once again, there are too many of them, so I tried to pick the most common and most important ones.


As a result, here is the list of top 10 abbreviations every .Net developer should be familiar with. 


Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side framework designed for web development first released in 1996. Its successor and more popular ASP.Net was released in 2002 as a part of the first version of the .Net framework. Currently available as open source, ASP.Net is a cross-platform framework that is supported by every .Net language and utilizes all the modern web standards and technologies to create web pages, web applications and web services. It supports the three development models, Web Pages, MVC (Model View Controller) and Web Forms.


Internet Information Services (IIS) is an extensible and modular web server created by Microsoft suited for web development using Microsoft technologies. It supports all modern protocols and offers several security and authentication features. According to the latest statistics, IIS is the second most popular web server behind the Apache HTTP server. Even though turned off by default, it is an integral part of most Windows operating system editions.


Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a set of data querying features that was released as a major part of .Net Framework 3.5. While syntaxicaly very similar to SQL, LINQ provides powerful out-of-the-box query capabilities to C# and Visual Basic that allow querying and updating a large variety of data stores and structures. Natively, it provides assemblies that enable its use with collections, SQL databases, datasets and XML documents. The technology is easy to learn and can be extended to support potentially any kind of data store.


Model View Controller (MVC) is a platform-independent software development architectural pattern that separates the application's concerns into three distinct and interconnected parts/layers, the business layer (Model logic), the display layer (View logic) and the input control (Controller logic). This separation simplifies group development, eases complex applications management and testing. Today, it is the preferred ASP.Net programming model since it lacks ViewState and provides several benefits over the older WebForms model.


Model View ViewModel (MVVM) is an event-driven software development architectural pattern that originated from Microsoft for use with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Based on MVC, MVVM is a time-tested and developer-approved design pattern that facilitates a clear separation of the development of the graphical user interface from the development of the business logic or back end logic known as the model. This pattern is now being implemented in other technology domains such as JavaScript's structural frameworks KnockoutJS, Kendo MVVM and Knockback.js.


Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a complex collaboration platform that covers the entire application lifecycle management and improves the development team's productivity. If offers all the tools and features needed to effectively manage software development projects such as source code management, reporting, automated builds and tests or project management for both agile and waterfall development teams. To get the most out of it and all its features, it should be used as a back-end of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio (VS) is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft that is used to build applications and websites that supports a wide range of programming languages such as C, C++, C# or Visual Basic. Currently in version 2014, Visual Studio is definitely the most complex tool available that meets all the requirements for fast, productive and error-prone software development. With countless numbers of features and plugins support, you rarely need any other tool as you can rely on Visual Studio in the entire application development life cycle. It comes in various editions such as Express, Professional or Ultimate that might slightly differ across the versions.


Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a flexible next-generation platform and is a new approach for building Service-Oriented Applications (SOA) within the .Net environment. With WCF, you can easily exchange asynchronous messages among the endpoints that can be hosted by IIS or in an application. It includes and supports several important features such as interoperability, service metadata, security, transactions, AJAX and REST. The architecture contains many extensibility points, so if required, the service's behavior can be customized.


Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a framework that enables developers to create applications that execute an ordered business process/logic also known as workflow. These workflows simplify application development by encapsulating the procedure in the workflow as so-called activities. WF provides an API, an in-process workflow engine and a rehostable designer for implementing all kinds of scenarios such as UI page flows, document-centric workflows or line-of-business (LOB) applications.


Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a consistent programming model for building both standalone and browser-hosted applications that was initially released as a part of .Net Framework 3.0. WPF, as a follower of "ancient" WinForms relies on a vector-based rendering engine that is resolution-independent allowing the developers to create a visually stunning user experience. Furthermore, it separates the business logic from the user interface and uses XAML (XML-based language) to define the elements. Microsoft Silverlight is a subset of WPF. Even though it is still actively developed, it was not designed to be fully responsive so it doesn't meet all the mobile-development requirements. Not any major changes are expected in future framework versions.

This was my top 10 list of .Net based technical abbreviations. But wait, where is Net itself? The truth is this is not an abbreviation at all since it is the name for the framework. There are many speculations floating over the internet what the real meaning actually is, but none of these were ever confirmed.

Thanks for reading and comments are more than welcome.