The truth that this variety of languages can coexist inside .NET is among the platform’s strengths. As a result of the code all will get compiled to CIL bytecode, it doesn’t matter which language you employ to write down your purposes. You’re free to resolve primarily based in your preferences, the strengths and weaknesses of every language, or the totally different facets of .NET you possibly can entry primarily based on the language you employ (these range). Whereas most of .NET’s base class library was written in C#, you possibly can entry these courses from code written in different CLI languages. Parts written in numerous CLI languages can freely interoperate throughout a .NET utility.
.NET historical past
Thus far, I’ve used “.NET” as a generic time period to check with the platform, however the .NET ecosystem is definitely a bit extra advanced. As a result of .NET is an open commonplace, anybody may probably implement their very own model of it. For a lot of the platform’s historical past, Microsoft’s model was known as the .NET Framework. One other well-known implementation was Mono, launched in 2001. Mono was an open supply implementation for working .NET purposes on Linux, and was controversial on the time resulting from dangerous blood between Microsoft and the open supply neighborhood. Later, Mono fashioned the premise of the Xamarin platform, which made it potential to construct .NET purposes for iOS, Android, and macOS in addition to Linux. Xamarin started life because the brainchild of Mono’s founders, however the firm they based to assist the challenge was in the end acquired by Microsoft.
By 2014, Microsoft and the developer neighborhood have been trying to consolidate their efforts into a .NET implementation rebuilt from the bottom up. The end result was what was initially known as .NET Core, a cross-platform implementation of the .NET commonplace that shed among the cruft that had accrued through the years and was launched as open supply in 2016. Initially, it lacked the total vary of options out there within the .NET Framework, and so the .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Xamarin all coexisted, which understandably prompted some confusion. In 2017, InfoWorld columnist Simon Bisson grappled with the query of which implementation needs to be used by which contexts.