[plorkyeran]

It gives faster startup time (due to AOT compilation rather than JIT), and doesn't require that the .NET framework be installed. Possibly better runtime performance, but I wouldn't expect huge gains there. P/Invoke should have lower overhead, which may be highly relevant for some things.

I suspect that there's things that require this which they haven't announced yet, since on its own it seems like something kinda nice but not beneficial enough to justify creating.

[tdicola]

Yeah I don't understand the need to get rid of a .NET framework dependency though. This only supports building Windows store apps, which only run on devices that have the .NET framework right now...

[itsboring]

One admittedly crazy theory is that this is laying the groundwork for building iOS apps and therefore would compete with Xamarin. Any kind of JIT would not be allowed on the iOS app store.

[tsenkov]

The word is, that Microsoft is talking with Xamarin about a possible acquisition.

[ebiggs]

Start up times could be a big deal to compete with iOS? Especially in similar app lifecycle models where apps could be stopped and restarted implicitly by the OS?

[Someone]

"It [...] doesn't require that the .NET framework be installed."

Are you sure? You still need the standard libraries, a garbage collector, its security checks when loading other code, and may want to use its compiler from your code. Together, that's a lot, maybe all, of what's in the framework.

[tracker1]

The standard library base is huge... they already split things into a desktop and full profile for the .Net installer. This will only need to include those portions of the library your app actually uses, which is generally a pretty small part (including GC). Not to mention future versions of the .Net runtime not needing to be installed on the target machine.