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Note

Coverage of creating cross-platform .NET applications using Mono can be found in Appendix B.

Summary

The point of this chapter was to lay out the conceptual framework necessary for the remainder of

this book. I began by examining a number of limitations and complexities found within the tech-

nologies prior to .NET, and followed up with an overview of how .NET and C# attempt to simplify

the current state of affairs.

.NET basically boils down to a runtime execution engine (mscoree.dll) and base class library

(mscorlib.dll and associates). The common language runtime (CLR) is able to host any .NET

binary (a.k.a. assembly) that abides by the rules of managed code. As you have seen, assemblies

contain CIL instructions (in addition to type metadata and the assembly manifest) that are com-

piled to platform-specific instructions using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. In addition, you explored

the role of the Common Language Specification (CLS) and Common Type System (CTS).

This was followed by an examination of the ildasm.exe and reflector.exe object browsing

utilities, as well as coverage of how to configure a machine to host .NET applications using

dotnetfx3setup.exe. I wrapped up by briefly addressing the platform-independent nature of C#

and the .NET platform, a topic further examined in Appendix B.

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