There have been some acutely observed facets as to why the .NET framework is seen as a hindrance insofar as appearing as a bloated installation to “non-techies”. Discussions about why this language is better than is misguided as far as the .NET framework is concerned.
· The .NET frame work has at it’s centre the CLR (Common Language Runtime) in which any code be it any of the five languages that ship with Visual Studio 2005 namely, Managed Extensions for C++.NET, C#.NET, Visual Basic.NET, J#.NET and Jscript.NET. This CLR also has compilers for SmallTalk, COBOL and Pascal. All these languages are compiled as an assembly (i.e. a .dll or an exe) into CIL (Common Immediate Language).
What this all means is language integration. A program can be written in many different languages and still work in Unison. Anybody that is aware of the previous COM architecture in windows will know that this type of integration was impossible. In a nutshell irrespective of what language code is written in, the .NET framework sees all the different language code as the same thing! This also allows for bigger more complex programs to be leveraged.
· The other central tenet of the .NET framework is the idea of “managed code”. There is a 3 year old video you can find here that cannot be improved upon insofar as explaining “exactly” why this is beneficial. You get an overall appreciation of how the .NET code is working “under-the-hood” which incontrovertibly allays any .NET fears. This video also touches on the word “productivity”. Coming from a native C++ environment myself, I cannot communicate just how productive I am in C# compared to native C++.
There will be always be space for native C++ for a plethora of applications that are time and accuracy dependant. I couldn’t imagine control of a missile/warhead, air traffic control systems or even windows drivers for that matter being relinquished to managed code. In the aforementioned video there is a C++ games developer that elucidates upon the specific benefits of managed code as well.
Another question is whether any of the .NET “dislikers” have the Java runtime installed on their machines ?
