Introduction to the C# Language and the .NET Framework
C# is an elegant and type-safe object-oriented language that enables developers to build a wide range of secure and robust applications that run on the .NET Framework. You can use C# to create traditional Windows client applications, XML Web services, distributed components, client-server applications, database applications, and much, much more. Microsoft Visual C# 2005 provides an advanced code editor, convenient user interface designers, integrated debugger, and many other tools to facilitate rapid application development based on version 2.0 of the C# language and the .NET Framework.
C# Language:
C# syntax is highly expressive, yet with less than 90 keywords, it is also simple and easy to learn. The curly-brace syntax of C# will be instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with C, C++ or Java. Developers who know any of these languages are typically able to begin working productively in C# within a very short time. C# syntax simplifies many of the complexities of C++ while providing powerful features such as nullable value types, enumerations, delegates, anonymous methods and direct memory access, which are not found in Java. C# also supports generic methods and types, which provide increased type safety and performance, and iterators, which enable implementers of collection classes to define custom iteration behaviors that are simple to use by client code.
.NET Framework Platform Architecture:
C# programs run on the .NET Framework, an integral component of Windows that includes a virtual execution system called the common language runtime (CLR) and a unified set of class libraries. The CLR is Microsoft's commercial implementation of the common language infrastructure (CLI), an international standard that is the basis for creating execution and development environments in which languages and libraries work together seamlessly.
The following diagram illustrates the compile-time and run time relationships of C# source code files, the base class libraries, assemblies, and the CLR.
Language interoperability is a key feature of the .NET Framework. Because the IL code produced by the C# compiler conforms to the Common Type Specification (CTS), IL code generated from C# can interact with code that was generated from the .NET versions of Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J#, or any of more than 20 other CTS-compliant languages. A single assembly may contain multiple modules written in different .NET languages, and the types can reference each other just as if they were written in the same language.
In addition to the run time services, the .NET Framework also includes an extensive library of over 4000 classes organized into namespaces that provide a wide variety of useful functionality for everything from file input and output to string manipulation to XML parsing, to Windows Forms controls. The typical C# application uses the .NET Framework class library extensively to handle common "plumbing" chores.
