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CHAPTER 1  THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET Understanding the Common Language Runtime In addition to the CTS and CLS specifications, the final TLA (three-letter abbreviation) to contend with at the moment is the CLR. Programmatically speaking, the term runtime can be understood as a collection of services that are required to execute a given compiled unit of code. For example, when Java developers deploy software to a new computer, they need to ensure the machine has been installed with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in order to run their software. The .NET platform offers yet another runtime system. The key difference between the .NET runtime and the various other runtimes I just mentioned is the fact that the . 9P