Preface

It was January 4, 1999, and the Visual C++ team had just returned from our holiday break, ready to put the finishing touches on a new version of Visual C++.¹ We had a surprise group meeting and discovered that the entire developer division was switching gears; our release was canceled, and we were going to work on a new thing that would become the .NET managed environment, libraries, and compilers.

I transitioned from test lead on the C++ compiler parser to test lead on a new language that we were building—one that would be a natural fit with the new environment. At that point, the language spec was only in an embryonic stage, and to understand how this language was supposed to work, I joined the design team. That led to a very enjoyable period, working with a small group of very smart people. A few years later, we were releasing the first version of C# and .NET to the world, and from the response, it was clear that developing for Microsoft platforms would never be the same.

More than 12 years have passed since the day I first picked up the language spec. C# was the kind of language that I always wanted to use when it was first released, and innovations such as Linq have only made it better. I’m confident that recent additions such as asynchronous support and treating the compiler as a service will continue that tradition.

I hope you enjoy this look behind the language.

—Eric Gunnerson

¹ If I recall correctly, it would have been Visual C++ V6.5.