Essential .NET, Volume 1: The Common Language Runtime

Messages as Method Calls

The CLR provides a rich architecture for modeling method invocation as an exchange of messages. This architecture is useful for building AOP-style interception. This architecture is useful for building RPC-style communication mechanisms. This architecture is also useful for handling asynchronous invocation and, in fact, it is used internally by the asynchronous method call facilities described in Chapter 6. The key to understanding this architecture is to reexamine what a method actually does. Ultimately, a method is simply a transformation of memory on the stack. Parenthetically, functional programming advocates would argue that this is all that a method is. The caller forms a call stack by pushing the appropriate parameters ...