.NET Common Language Runtime Unleashed

Brief History of the CLR

The CLR started around 1997. By then, COM had been around for a while and was due for a makeover. Work was begun on MTS and building a more comprehensive type system for COM+ to make COM more universally accessible from a wider array of languages. At the same time, Microsoft wanted to somehow unify the many different code management schemes. Visual Basic, FoxPro, and later J++ all had different mechanisms to manage code. Although each had its strengths and weakness, it was desirable strictly from a code-management point of view to merge the code management methodologies.

Intermediate Language (IL) specifically can trace its roots to Microsoft P-Code. A key design consideration was that the code had to be designed for ...