Introduction

Jim Miller, Program Manager for the Common Language Runtime (CLR) at Microsoft, when interviewed by Robert Hess, defined the CLR as follows in The .NET Show (http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/Episode020/Transcripttext.asp):

Robert Hess: So what exactly is the CLR? If I want to talk [about] it as an object, what would you define it as?

Jim Miller: Well, it is hard to define as a single thing. It is a combination of things. It is a file format that is used for transferring files between systems that are using the .NET framework, essentially. It is the programming goo inside there that lets your program run. It is the thing that takes the way your program has been compiled into this Intermediate Language, and actually turns that into machine ...

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