What Is the .NET Framework?

What Is the .NET Framework?
Over the past few years, the importance of the Internet has grown enormously for almost
all areas of computing and information processing. A direct result of this growth is that
programmers are asked to create applications that take advantage of the Internet’s
capabilities, whether for order processing, broadband content delivery, online collaboration,
or any of a host of uses. Unfortunately, the development tools previously available to
developers, such as Visual C++ 6 and Visual Basic 6, had their origins in the pre-Internet
world. Any Internet capabilities they had were afterthoughts, tacked on to meet developer
demands. Some Internet programming technologies were actually quite impressive, and
many terrific applications have been created with them. Even so, that Internet capabilities
weren’t built into these programming tools from the ground up led to unavoidable problems
with development efficiency, bugs, and program maintenance.
Microsoft’s answer to this dilemma was to start essentially from scratch, creating a new
framework of developer tools that was designed from day 1 with fully integrated Internet
support. The .NET framework is not only about Internet programming; it also provides
for more traditional desktop application development. However, there’s no doubt that the
excitement about .NET is mostly about its Internet capabilities—and we can tell you
from experience, they are really great!
.NET has two main parts:
• The .NET framework Software Development Kit, an extensive set of classes and
interfaces, along with various supporting elements, that’s designed to work together
to meet just about any imaginable development need. The .NET framework must
be installed on any system that will be used to run .NET applications or to develop
them. The .NET SDK includes compilers for three languages: the venerable C++, a
vastly improved Visual Basic, and—most important for this book—a new language
called C# (C-sharp).
• The Visual Studio development environment. This sophisticated tool provides a
comprehensive set of programmer tools, such as code editors, interface designers,
and debuggers, that greatly simplifies the task of creating .NET applications.
Strictly speaking, you don’t need Visual Studio to develop .NET programs, but
few programmers will want to do without its time- and effort-saving capabilities.