.NET Programming: A Practical Guide Using C#

Summary

C# provides the flexibility of C++ and the simplicity of Visual Basic. It has many features that have a close tie to the .NET Framework. It also provides productivity features such as automated documentation.

The heart of the .NET Framework is the common language runtime, the runtime environment that manages the execution of MSIL code. Any code that targets the common language runtime is called managed code; it benefits from many features offered by the common language runtime, such as automatic garbage collection, JIT compilation of MSIL to native code, and cross-language operability. The common language runtime also provides a uniform mechanism for error handling by way of exceptions.

The .NET Framework defines many base datatypes such ...