17.1. Reasons for Learning the Grammar of CIL
CIL is the true mother tongue of the .NET platform. When you build a .NET assembly using your managed language of choice (C#, VB, F#, COBOL.NET, etc.), the associated compiler translates your source code into terms of CIL. Like any programming language, CIL provides numerous structural and implementation-centric tokens. Given that CIL is just another .NET programming language, it should come as no surprise that it is possible to build your .NET assemblies directly using CIL and the CIL compiler (ilasm.exe) that ships with the .NET Framework 4.0 SDK.
Now while it is true that few programmers would choose to build an entire .NET application directly with CIL, CIL is still an extremely interesting intellectual ...
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