1.3 .NET Programming Languages

.NET has been designed to support multiple languages. Microsoft anticipates that most Visual Basic developers will want to carry on using the syntax they are familiar with, and will therefore stick with Visual Basic .NET. But developers with a C++ background are encouraged to change to a new language called C#. The problem with C++ is it is designed to support a very low-level style of programming—it fully supports all the classic C idioms, and C has often been described as a machine-independent assembly language. The low-level nature of C++ does not sit well with the new high-level nature of the CLR and the class libraries. (Visual Basic does not have this problem because it has always been a relatively high-level language.)

Although C++ is supported in .NET, it is not being pushed as the language of choice for erstwhile C++ developers. Instead, Microsoft has created a new language called C#. Designed by Anders Hejlsberg (creator of Delphi), C# is a language with syntax based on C++, but that works natively with exactly the same set of abstractions as the CLR provides. Just as C++ was the natural choice for developers who wanted to write code that was at home in the Win32 world, C# is a great choice for .NET programming, because it was designed to be a perfect match for the CLR. Its syntactic origins mean that anyone familiar with C or C++ (or Java) can learn C# very quickly.

For the most part, C# is like C++ without the low-level grunge. In fact, it is possible to use C-style features like pointers even in C#, although you need to turn off the relevant safety catches on the compiler before it will let you do this. However, this is mostly to make sure that C++ developers don't feel emasculated by moving to C#. While it is comforting for C++ veterans to know that pointers are still there if required, in practice, it is extremely rare to need to use these features in C#.

All example code in this book is presented in both C# and Visual Basic .NET, because the majority of Windows applications will be written in one or the other of these languages in the future.