The. NET Framework

The. NET Framework is basically a set of different technologies:

• Languages. NET - Visual Basic, C #, JScript.NET, J # and C + +
• The common language runtime (CLR) - The engine that runs all the programs. NET and provides services to various applications (such as memory management and performance optimization)
• . NET Framework Class Library - A library that contains thousands of pre-built functionality for use in our applications
• ASP.NET - The engine that runs web applications built on the. NET
• Visual Studio - Development environment that contains a rich set of features that facilitate developer productivity and simplify debugging of applications

Often the distinction between these components is not clear and we tend to confuse with each other. Here is an 'image taken from Microsoft that helps to better understand the distribution of various technologies within the Class Library

The most widely used languages ​​are definitely C # and VB.NET. In particular, C # is a relatively new language designed for version 1.0. NET. The two languages ​​use different syntax, but each exploits the capabilities of the Class Library, and are supported by the CLR.

All languages. NET is compiled into a more low-level language before the code is executed. This language is called the Common Intermediate Language (CIL, or simply IL) and the CLR operates only on this type of code. The following images from the Microsoft site illustrating how the languages. NET is compiled into CIL and the structure of the CLR

Structure of the CLR

Virtually every EXE (or DLL) generated by. NET contains CIL code, and these are the files that are distributed on the PC client, in the case of Windows Forms applications, or on the web server, in the case of web applications. The CLR has no idea what language was used to generate the code and make another compilation to convert the CIL code into machine language. This step occurs when the code is executed.

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