1. Introducing .

NET
The Microsoft .NET Framework is a collection of software technologies that began emerging from
Microsoft Corporation around the earlier 2000s. According to Microsoft, .NET is a Free, Cross-
Platform, Open-Source developer platform for building many different types of applications.
With .NET, we can use multiple languages (C#, VB, F#, etc.), Editors (Visual Studio, Visual
Studio Code, Visual Studio for Mac, OmniSharp, JetBrains Rider, etc), and Libraries to build for
Web, Mobile, Desktop, Games, IoT, and more.

Historically speaking, when programmers used a Microsoft development language (e.g., VB6) or
Microsoft programming framework (e.g., MFC, COM, or ATL), they had to resign themselves to
building software that (by-and-large) executed only on the Windows family of operating systems.
I.e. these applications were platform dependent. Using .NET, your applications can find happy
homes on numerous operating systems, including Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX, and numerous flavors
of Unix/Linux.

You can program for .NET in a variety of programming languages. However, any language you
use for .NET programming must meet a set of minimum requirements inorder to use the .NET
class libraries. These requirements are known as the .NET Common Language Specification or
CLS. Related to the CLS is the .NET Common Type System (CTS) which defines the basic data
types (such as integer, floating point, and string) that .NET languages support. The CLS and CTS
are in turn part of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). The CLI is an ISO standard and
an ECMA standard.

The .NET Framework mainly provides two fundamental things:

BCL (Base Class Libraries)

CLR (Common Language Runtime)

1.1. What is BCL?

The Base Class Library provides a set of APIs and types for common functionality. It provides
types for strings, dates, numbers, etc. The Class Library includes APIs for reading and writing
files, connecting to databases, drawing, and more. Without BCL we can’t write any code in .NET.
So, BCL is also known as the basic building block of .NET Programs. BCL contains pre-defined
classes and these classes are used for the purpose of application development. These classes are
installed onto our machine when we intall the .NET framework.

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 1.2. What is CLR?
CLR stands for Common Language Runtime and it is the core component under the
.NET framework which is responsible for converting the MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate
Language) code into native code.

When you compile one of your .NET programs, the program is generally compiled to a processor-
independent intermediate language that resembles machine code. This intermediate language was
once called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), and it‘s still often known by that name.
Sometimes it‘s just called Intermediate Language (IL). But the most proper term is now the
Common Intermediate Language (CIL).

When a .NET program is run on a particular machine, the CIL is compiled to the native code of
the processor by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. This two-stage compilation potentially allows for
portability among various platforms and processors. The just-in-time compilation is performed by
the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), which is part of the .NET system installed on end-
user‘s machines.

The CLR manages the execution of .NET programs, and can prevent programs from causing
damage to the user‘s machine. Thus, when you are programming for .NET you are said to be
writing ―managed code. One important aspect of managed code involves the management of
memory. As object-oriented programming and class libraries have become more complex over
recent years, common problems have arisen involving memory allocation. Very often it‘s not clear
who is responsible for freeing a particular memory block. For that reason, the CLR implements
garbage collection. The CLR can determine if a particular block of memory can no longer be
referenced by a program, and then free such blocks of memory if required.

Microsoft makes available several languages to the .NET programmer. Which one you use is
mostly a matter of personal taste. Some people program for .NET using Visual Basic .NET. Others
use Managed C++, more formally known now as C++/CLI.

However, most .NET programmers have come to know and love C#, the programming language
designed in conjunction with .NET. C# incorporates much of the basic expression and statement
syntax of C, and has a rather cleaner object-oriented programming syntax than C++. One of the
biggest difference being, C# does not require you to mess around with pointers. Traditional C-like
pointers are supported in C# syntax, but they are normally relegated to interoperability with
existing code. Rather than pointers, the .NET and C# programmer works with ―references, and
these references are usually implied rather than being syntactically explicit.

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 1.3. Different types of .NET Framework
The .NET framework is available in three different flavors

.NET Framework: .NET Framework is the original implementation of .NET. It supports running
websites, services, desktop applications, and more on Windows OS Only.

.NET: .NET is a cross-platform implementation for running websites, services, and console
applications on Windows, Linux, and macOS. .NET was previously called .NET Core.

Xamarin/Mono: Xamarin/Mono is a .NET implementation for running apps on all the major
mobile operating systems, including iOS and Android.

Note: .NET Framework is Platform-Dependent while .NET or .NET Core is Platform

Independent.

More on the .NET Framework here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/dotnet/what-is-

dotnet-framework

1.4. Runtimes and SDKs

To run .NET programs on your machine, you‘ll need to have some software installed that is
variously known as the .NET ―runtime or ―runtime components or ―redistributable or
―redistributable package. The term ―redistributable means that a software developer like
yourself can distribute the .NET runtime if it‘s part of an installation for an application that requires
the .NET Framework to run.

You‘ll need the .NET runtime components to run .NET programs. To develop .NET programs on
your machine, you‘ll also need to install the .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK).
Both the runtime and the SDK are free and both are generally downloadable from the same or
related Web pages.

.NET downloads here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download

Refresher Questions:
1. What is a namespace?
2. What is an assembly?
3. What is the difference between .NET Framework and .NET core?
4. How does .NET achieve plateform independence?