CHAPTER 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET
In addition to the managed languages provided by Microsoft, there are .NET compilers for
Smalltalk, Ruby, Python, COBOL, and Pascal (to name a few). Although this book focuses almost
exclusively on C#, you might be interested in the following web site:
www.dotnetlanguages.net
If you click the Resources link at the top of the homepage, you will find a list of .NET programming
languages and related links where you are able to download various compilers (see Figure 1-2).
Figure 1-2. DotNetLanguages.net is one of many sites documenting known .NET programming languages
While I assume you are primarily interested in building .NET programs using the syntax of C#, I
encourage you to visit this site, as you are sure to find many .NET languages worth investigating at your
leisure (LISP.NET, anyone?).
Life in a Multilanguage World
As developers first come to understand the language-agnostic nature of .NET, numerous questions arise.
The most prevalent of these questions would have to be, “If all .NET languages compile down to
managed code, why do we need more than one language/compiler?”
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