The Base Class Library

The .NET Framework Base Class Library (BCL) provides thousands of reusable types that you can use in your code and that cover all the .NET technologies, such as Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET, LINQ, and so on. Types defined in the Base Class Library enable developers to do millions of things without the need of calling unmanaged code and Windows APIs and, often, without recurring to external components. A type is something that states what an object must represent. For example, String and Integer are types, and you might have a variable of type String (that is, a text message) or a variable of type Integer (a number). Saying Type is not the same as saying Class. In fact, types can be of two kinds: reference ...

Get Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.