CHAPTER 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET
Some Key Benefits of the .NET Platform
As mentioned, C# and the .NET platform were first introduced to the world in 2002 and were intended to
offer a much more powerful, more flexible, and simpler programming model than COM. As you will see
during the remainder of this book, the .NET Framework is a software platform for building systems on
the Windows family of operating systems, as well as on numerous non-Microsoft operating systems such
as Mac OS X and various Unix/Linux distributions. To set the stage, here is a quick rundown of some
core features provided courtesy of .NET:
Interoperability with existing code: This is (of course) a good thing. Existing COM
binaries can commingle (i.e., interop) with newer .NET software and vice versa. As
of .NET 4.0 onward, interoperability has been further simplified with the addition
of the dynamic keyword (covered in Chapter 16).
Support for numerous programming languages: .NET applications can be created
using any number of programming languages (C#, Visual Basic, F#, and so on).
A common runtime engine shared by all .NET-aware languages: One aspect of this
engine is a well-defined set of types that each