Chapter 1. Introducing .NET

The creation of C# is part of the .NET initiative, and a brief introduction about .NET here seems timely. ^[1] It is important to get a rudimentary understanding of what .NET is, and the related technologies, in order to know how C# fits into the big picture. Understanding how CLR works is also important if you want to write a C# program.

^[1] I had initially wanted to put this whole section in an appendix since the focus of this book is on the C# language rather than .NET. Nevertheless, it really is necessary to know at least a bit about .NET. Have you ever met someone who claims to be a Java developer but doesn't know that Java's platform independence is achieved via the JVM? In the same way, a C# developer should understand how language independence (and probably platform independence in the future) is achieved via the .NET CLR.