C# Version History

C# feature & Update version by version

02NOV

C# List features

C# 1.0

Microsoft released the first version of C# with Visual Studio 2002. Use of Managed Code was introduced with this version. C# 1.0 was the first language that developer adopted to build .NET applications.

C# 2.0

Microsoft released the second version of C# language with Visual Studio 2005. C# 2.0 has introduced few new features in this edition which helped the developers to code their applications in more generic way. Here are the new features that were introduced with C# 2.0:

1. Generics
2. Anonymous Methods
3. Nullable Type
4. Partial Class
5. Covariance and Contravariance

C# 3.0

Visual Studio 2008 came with C# version 3.0 and it has a bunch of new features. It was the life-changing the language for Microsoft platform developers to build their applications. Till now, many developers are still using this version to build their apps. The new features that came with C# 3.0 were:

1. Lambda Expression
2. Extension Methods
3. Expression Trees
4. Anonymous Types
5. LINQ
6. Implicit Type (var)

C# 4.0

Though C# 4.0 was released with Visual Studio 2010 with .NET Framework 4, very few developers use its new features till date. Here is a list of new features of C# that came with this version:

1. Late Binding
2. Named Arguments
3. Optional Parameters
4. More COM Support

C# 5.0

Visual Studio 2012 came up with C# 5.0 and it was made available to the audience in the year 2012. In C# version 5.0, there are two key features:

1. Async Programming
2. Caller Information

C# 6.0

The C# 6.0 release contained many features that improve productivity for developers.  Some of the features in this release were:

1. Read-only Auto-properties
2. String Interpolation
3. await in catch and finally blocks
4. index initializers
5. Null- conditional operators

C# 7.0

C# 7.0 is the current version (at the time of writing this article) which adds a number of new features to the C# language:

1. Pattern Matching
2. out variables
3. throw Expressions
4. Tuples
5. ref locals & returns and few more…

C# 7.1

C# 7.1 is the new version (at the time of updating this article) which again adds a couple of new features to the C# language:

1. Asynchronous Main – Main could be void or int and contain arguments as a string array.
2. Default Literal – Visual Basic and C# have similar features, but there are certain differences in the languages, i.e. C# has null, while VB.NET has Nothing.

That’s all as per this post is concerned. We will update this list as soon as new version is out in the market.

C# version history in tabular format for quick view:

Version	Date	.NET Framework	Visual Studio
C# 1.0	Jan-02	.NET Framework 1.0	Visual Studio .NET 2002
C# 1.1/1.2	Apr-03	.NET Framework 1.1	Visual Studio .NET 2003
C# 2.0	Nov-05	.NET Framework 2.0	Visual Studio .NET 2005
C# 3.0	Nov-07	.NET Framework 2.0 (Except LINQ),.NET Framework 3.0 (Except LINQ), .NET Framework 3.5	Visual Studio .NET 2008,Visual Studio .NET 2010
C# 4.0	Apr-10	.NET Framework 4.0	Visual Studio .NET 2010
C# 5.0	Aug-12	.NET Framework 4.5	Visual Studio .NET 2012/2013
C# 6.0	Jul-15	.NET Framework 4.6	Visual Studio .NET 2015
C# 7.0	Mar-17	.NET Framework 4.6.2	Visual Studio .NET 2017