Visual Studio® 2010 and .NET 4, Six-in-one

Chapter 23. History of C#

Over the course of the past decade or so, the C# language (and, of course, the .NET Framework) has evolved to become a determining part of modern software development. From its first release in the beginning of 2002, the C# language has gone through an amazing progression, and attracted millions of developers into the .NET camp. As of today, C# is in its fourth version.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of the C# language. The discussions in this chapter do not teach you the language, which is definitely not in the scope of this book. Rather, the discussions in this chapter assume that you have already used the language. If you are a Visual Basic developer, this chapter also helps you to stay in context.

This chapter addresses the following topics:

• A brief history of the C# language

• The main characteristic of C# (as it was established in C# 1.0)

• A brief overview of features in C# 2.0 and C# 3.0

After having so many Visual Studio and .NET Framework releases in the past, it is now safe to say that every major Visual Studio release hosts a new version of the C# language. The same holds true for Visual Studio 2010, which introduces C# 4.0. In Chapter 25, you'll learn about the details of the new features found in C# 4.0.

THE EVOLUTION OF C#

Today, C# is a multi-paradigm programming language. However, it started out as a general-purpose, object-oriented language.

The development team of the C# language was led by Anders Hejlsberg, who joined Microsoft ...