Microsoft Intermediate Language
As you can see in Figure A.1, all .NET code, regardless of the language syntax used, compiles to Intermediate Language (IL) code. IL code is the only code the common language runtime understands; it doesn't understand Visual C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, or any other developer syntax. It's IL that gives .NET its multilanguage capabilities; as long as an original source language can be compiled to IL, it can become a .NET language. For example, people are developing a .NET compiler for COBOL—a mainframe language with a long history. This compiler will take existing COBOL code and compile it to IL so that it will run within the .NET Framework using the common language runtime. COBOL itself isn't a Windows language ...
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