Changes

C# is the latest progression in a never ending quest to make it as easy and efficient as possible for humans to program computers. Whilst it would be easy to simply describe C# as just another object oriented programming language developed by Mcirosfot and ratified by ECMA and ISO, the fact is that C# is actually an integral part of an entire development and execution infrastructure. There primary object of this chapter of [[C Sharp Essentials|C# Essentials]] is to provide an overview of both the C# language and the infrastructure on which it relies. By the end of this chapter it also is intended that the reader will have a clear understanding of what acronyms such as CLI, CLR, VES, JIT and .NET mean.

The problem with programming is that computers think exclusively in numbers (the numbers 0 and 1 to be precise) known as ''machine code'' while humans communicate using words. In the very early days programmers actually entered machine code directly into computers to program them. This, as you can imagine, was a laborious and error prone process. The next evolution was to associate brief human readable commands with the corresponding machine code. For example, a programmer could enter the command ''MOV'' to transfer a value from one microprocessor register to another. These commands would then be translated into machine code by a piece of software called an ''assembler'', thereby giving this command syntax the name ''Assembly Lanaguage''.