14.2. The Role of .NET Assemblies

.NET applications are constructed by piecing together any number of assemblies. Simply put, an assembly is a versioned, self-describing binary file hosted by the CLR. Now, despite the fact that .NET assemblies have exactly the same file extensions (*.exe or *.dll) as previous Windows binaries (including legacy COM servers), they have very little in common with those files under the hood. Thus, to set the stage for the information to come, let's consider some of the benefits provided by the assembly format.

14.2.1. Assemblies Promote Code Reuse

As you have built your Console Applications over the previous chapters, it may have seemed that all of the applications' functionality was contained within the executable ...

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