The C# Programming Language (Covering C# 4.0), Fourth Edition

Foreword

It’s been ten years since the launch of .NET in the summer of 2000. For me, the significance of .NET was the one-two combination of managed code for local execution and XML messaging for program-to-program communication. What wasn’t obvious to me at the time was how important C# would become.

From the inception of .NET, C# has provided the primary lens used by developers for understanding and interacting with .NET. Ask the average .NET developer the difference between a value type and a reference type, and he or she will quickly say, “Struct versus class,” not “Types that derive from System.ValueType versus those that don’t.” Why? Because people use languages—not APIs—to communicate their ideas and intention to the runtime and, more ...