I like the idea of learning new things and within .Net the new Core 1.0 is as new as its gets as they have just renamed it from .Net 5 to .Net Core 1.0
But the project I was thinking of using it on is not a pet project or a small test this will be a full enterprise solution, in its current state is .Net Core 1.0 is ready to use like this? as it seam's to be missing a few bits and obviously has not been tested or battle hardened like the old .Net.
Now the programmer in me wants to do the new thing, but the work side says to stick with what's safe so you don't overrun.
UPDATE 2017: Both runtime and tooling have reached "RTM", have been released and are supported by Microsoft.
"Release Candidate" versions of .NET Core may have unanticipated bugs but are supported and covered by a "Go Live" license. So if you have a problem and a support contract, Microsoft will help you. Also, you can probably expect major blocking issues to be addressed in a timely manner (there has been an "rc1 update1" with a few fixes). The team frequently reiterates that they believe an RC to be production ready and appreciate feedback if you do run into issues (see the videos on live.asp.net).
While there is no RC for the rebranded "core 1.0"-version yet, you can start out by using the RC1 (using dnx
instead of the dotnet
cli).
The Roadmap has not yet been updated but a lot of github repos (cli, coreclr, corefx) have been updated with an "rc2" milestone for April 22 and an "rtm" for June 30.
According to the "old" schedule, .NET Core and ASP.NET Core would have already shipped ("rtm") but they decided to make infrastructure changes - switching to a new CLI, TFM ("netstandard") and "deployment model" (no dnx
anymore). In my opinion, seeing that the currently, most work is happening on this infrastructure, you can expect the "core" (pun intended) to be stable and i personally would use it for production systems.
If you are starting development now: the daily builds of dnx
are still updated to work with the new dotnet
cli projects so you get Visual Studio Tooling Support.