Current world
All the pieces were in place for a royal battle. Sun and Microsoft had fallen out, but Java was well established and had a growing band of followers.
In the Redmond camp, things were moving apac
All the pieces were in place for a royal battle. Sun and Microsoft had fallen out, but Java was well established and had a growing band of followers.
In the Redmond camp, things were moving apace. The COOL work finally broke cover as C#, a new programming language which Microsoft claims will push the boundaries forward for developers who like the C, C++ way of doing things. However, instead of compiling code to the native OS and hardware, you compile to an IL (Intermediate Language) that is run by a JIT engine at run-time. Shades of Java? One thing that separates Microsofts solution from Suns is that you can have a multiplicity of languages that can compile to IL. So the forthcoming VB compiles to IL. So does a whole raft of other languages, all of which Microsoft claims will be supporting the .NET framework.
But what is this? Jpython, which takes Python code and compiles it to Java byte code? Theres nothing clever in the multilanguage support in .NET. Indeed, when you take a hard look at the fingerprint IL forces onto a language, its hard to claim its the original language any more. In other words, VB for .NET isnt really VB 6+1; its a VB-alike language that has some aspects of the original and plenty of new things. So do the other languages involved.
This .NET is the fundamental building block of the .NET strategy. It exposes all the necessary pieces for applications to run. It hosts the IL language objects that youve written and compiles them with the JIT compiler for faster run-time performance. The interobject language is essentially XML - everywhere you look, you find XML seeping out of the framework.
This article appeared in the March, 2002 issue of PC Authority.
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