JIT Compilation
As you’ve seen, all .NET languages compile code targeting IL as the destination code format. Today’s processors do not know how to execute code written in this format, so something needs to happen to turn IL code into instructions the target processor can deal with. The runtime service that’s responsible for making the mapping between IL code and native processor instructions is called the Just-in-Time compiler, often abbreviated as JIT and referred to as “the jitter.”
Note
Although IL code is machine-independent, the .NET language compilers allow code to be compiled targeting a specified machine architecture, using a /platform switch. This functionality is used rather rarely but comes in handy sometimes when interoperating ...
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