The EF Core thing might make a little more sense with some context. It originally started out only compatible with .NET Core (which was the successor to .NET Fr

The EF Core thing might make a little more sense with some context. It originally started out only compatible with .NET Core (which was the successor to .NET Framework) Eventually Microsoft came to the conclusion that doing .NET Framework to .NET Core migration in tandem with an EF6 to EF Core migration would be a huge undertaking for legacy projects. So as of EF Core 2.1 they added support for .NET Framework 4.7.2+ so people could migrate that first, then move to .NET Core. Therefore you end up with the weirdness that it was .NET Core only, then eventually it wasn’t, despite being called EF Core. As for Standard.. can’t help but agree, it was a bit of a mess unless you really understood what it meant for API compatibility. But with .NET 5.0, Standard is pretty much gone for new code. See https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-future-of-net-standard/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-future-of-net-stan.... So I think Microsoft is slowly learning and fixing up some mistakes made in the “Core” era