The truth that this range of languages can coexist inside .NET is without doubt one of the platform’s strengths. As a result of the code all will get compiled to CIL bytecode, it doesn’t matter which language you employ to jot down your purposes. You might be free to resolve based mostly in your preferences, the strengths and weaknesses of every language, or the totally different features of .NET you possibly can entry based mostly on the language you employ (these differ). Whereas most of .NET’s base class library was written in C#, you possibly can entry these courses from code written in different CLI languages. Parts written in numerous CLI languages can freely interoperate throughout a .NET utility.
.NET historical past
To date, I’ve used “.NET” as a generic time period to discuss with the platform, however the .NET ecosystem is definitely a bit extra advanced. As a result of .NET is an open normal, anybody may probably implement their very own model of it. For a lot of the platform’s historical past, Microsoft’s model was referred to as the .NET Framework. One other well-known implementation was Mono, launched in 2001. Mono was an open supply implementation for operating .NET purposes on Linux, and was controversial on the time because of unhealthy blood between Microsoft and the open supply neighborhood. Later, Mono shaped the premise of the Xamarin platform, which made it attainable to construct .NET purposes for iOS, Android, and macOS in addition to Linux. Xamarin started life because the brainchild of Mono’s founders, however the firm they based to help the undertaking was in the end acquired by Microsoft.
By 2014, Microsoft and the developer neighborhood had been seeking to consolidate their efforts into a .NET implementation rebuilt from the bottom up. The end result was what was initially referred to as .NET Core, a cross-platform implementation of the .NET normal that shed a few of the cruft that had amassed through the years and was launched as open supply in 2016. Initially, it lacked the complete vary of options accessible within the .NET Framework, and so the .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Xamarin all coexisted, which understandably induced some confusion. In 2017, InfoWorld columnist Simon Bisson grappled with the query of which implementation ought to be used through which contexts.
