Types Revisited
At the heart of managed code lies the concept of types. Defining the concept of a type is not an easy task, but put simply, it offers a means for the runtime to know what precisely a certain object is, and hence what the valid operations are to be performed on it. Typing is a crucial concept in the world of managed code because of the type-safety guarantees the platform offers.
Types are blueprints for objects. They describe the shape of objects that are said to have that particular type. Such a shape has two key elements:
• Data is what an object contains and operates on. It directly relates to the layout of objects in memory because storage needs to be provided for all the discrete pieces of data that make up an object.
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