Code like a Pro in C#

2 .NET and how it compiles

This chapter covers

• Compiling C# to native code
• Reading and understanding Intermediate Language

In 2020, Microsoft released .NET 5, an all-encompassing software development platform. Before that, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Microsoft created the .NET Framework, which was the precursor to .NET 5. The original use case for the .NET Framework was developing enterprise Windows applications. In fact, we’ll use the .NET Framework to examine exactly such a codebase in chapters 3 and 4. The .NET Framework ties together a large collection of libraries. Although the .NET Framework and C# are frequently used together, we do encounter use cases for the .NET Framework without C# (most notably, using a different .NET language). ...