Microsoft .NET

Microsoft .NET

To be honest, .NET is a lot of things. Actually, we know so little about .NET that we were ourselves tempted to bluff our way through it this month!

Well, anyway, .NET is “software that connects information, people, systems, and devices. It spans clients, servers, and developer tools”—whatever that means. Just remember to use those words when talking about .NET!

Now, Microsoft .NET consists of many things:

• The .NET Framework 1.1, used for building and running all kinds of software


• Developer tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003


• A set of servers Client software such as Windows XP
  
  

Now you at least know what .NET is. So, what’s the .NET Framework? Basically, it is “an integral Windows component for building and running the next generation of software applications and Web services.”

In addition, it is composed of the common language runtime (CLR) and a unified set of class libraries.

Pay attention! The CLR is responsible for run-time services such as language integration, CLR security enforcement, and memory, process, and even thread management.

Here’s how to sound as though you know about .NET programming: just say, “I’m currently working on crosslanguage exception handling. That has a lot to do with strong typing: and runtime binding as well; .NET makes it easy for me to use class libraries to do the exception handling without having to go into the intricacies of Windows Forms.”

Of course, that doesn’t make any sense, but then again, who’ll ever know?