Chapter 2. .NET Framework Fundamentals

As a developer, you write application code using your preferred .NET language, such as Visual Basic .NET or Visual C# .NET. When you build the application, the .NET compilers output Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), which is a representation of your code that is independent of the target platform. Then the linker packages the output in a Portable Executable (PE) file. Generally, these PE files contain no native code and execute on any platform for which there is a .NET common language runtime (CLR), as long as the .NET Framework class libraries that the application references are available on that platform as well.

When you build applications targeted at devices equipped with the .NET Compact Framework, ...

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