2 The Microsoft .NET Framework
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:
- What the .NET Framework is
- Using the .NET vision
- Common Language Runtime
- Common Type System
The .NET Framework provides an unprecedented platform for building Windows, web, and mobile applications with one or more programming languages. It is a definitive guide, encompassing and encapsulating where we have come from as a development community and, of course, where we are going.
.NET has been a success in many respects. Within the .NET Framework, languages (C# and F#) have been born, and the well-established Visual Basic language has been reborn. The .NET Framework even supports legacy languages such as C++.
The .NET Framework provides the base for all development using Visual Studio 2015. It provides base classes, available to all Visual Studio 2015 languages, for such functions as accessing databases, parsing XML, displaying and processing Windows and web forms, and providing security for your applications. All languages in Visual Studio 2015 share and use the same base classes, making your choice of a programming language in Visual Studio 2015 a matter of personal preference and syntax style.
THE .NET VISION
To understand .NET, you have to ignore the marketing hype from Microsoft and really think about what it is doing. With the first version of the .NET Framework and indeed even now, Microsoft appears to be pushing .NET as a platform for building web services and large-scale enterprise systems. Web services ...
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