Unity Game Optimization - Third Edition

Code compilation

When we make changes to our C# code, it is automatically compiled when we switch back from our favorite IDE (which is typically either MonoDevelop or the much more feature-rich Visual Studio) to the Unity Editor. However, the C# code is not converted directly into machine code, as we would expect static compilers to do if we are using languages such as C++.

Instead, the code is converted into an intermediate stage called Common Intermediate Language (CIL), which is an abstraction above the native code. This is how .NET can support multiple languages—each uses a different compiler, but they're all converted into CIL, so the output is effectively the same regardless of the language that we pick. CIL is similar to Java bytecode, ...