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What C# Brings to the Table

Given that .NET is such a radical departure from previous technologies, Microsoft crafted a new

programming language, C# (pronounced “see sharp”), specifically for this new platform. C# is a pro-

gramming language whose core syntax looks 

very similar to the syntax of Java. However, to call C# a

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Java rip-off is inaccurate. Both C# and Java are members of the C family of programming languages

(C, Objective C, C++, etc.) and therefore share a similar syntax. Just as Java is in many ways a

cleaned-up version of C++, C# can be viewed as a cleaned-up version of Java.

The truth of the matter is that many of C#’s syntactic constructs are modeled after various

aspects of Visual Basic 6.0 and C++. For example, like VB6, C# supports the notion of formal type

properties (as opposed to traditional getter and setter methods) and the ability to declare methods

taking a varying number of arguments (via parameter arrays). Like C++, C# allows you to overload

operators, as well as to create structures, enumerations, and callback functions (via delegates).