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I've been reading up on .NET Core vs Standard vs. Framework, and people are talking about API Surface Area. What does this refer to? Is this just the collective amount of functionality?

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    "API surface area" is the part of the API exposed to others. The part "on the outside" that others can see and interact with.
    – Raymond Chen
    Commented Nov 22, 2018 at 18:02
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    Implementing an api requires writing a bunch of code. You want that code to be as invisible as possible. The plumbing should be internal and only the api types and methods should be public. It is harder to do in .NETCore because it is built from a very large number of small assemblies. Originally motivated to make it easier to port to different operating systems.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Nov 22, 2018 at 18:17
  • Classes and methods for short. Like other comments indicated, it is what your assembly can consume if you are an application developer. If you write libraries, that’s what you expose to others.
    – Lex Li
    Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 0:14
  • Thanks guys! Much appreciated!
    – kickinchicken
    Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 15:30

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You can say API surface area as peice of code or program that our code can interact with.

For example : .NET Standard libraries come with everything in NETStandard.Library whereas .NET Core libraries come with everything in Microsoft.NETCore.App which has some additional libraries.

As you can see .NET core projects are likely to interact with more programs compared to .NET Standard libraries as it has addional libraries.

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  • In what situations .NET Core and .NET Standard Class Library project types will be used?
    – Flow.NK
    Commented Aug 6 at 6:03

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