So I grudgingly decided to dive into Microsoft’s “Big New Incompatible Thing”, .NET, after realizing that I’m a bit behind atm.
Hmmmm, OK, so it’s hardly new, but it recently has been getting so far integrated into Windows that I saw it as a necessity.
So, I DLed VS ‘08 Pro (With all the languages), and the entire MSDN documentation onto my HDD, and here are my thoughts…
The .NET Framework my .NET apps were using was 3.5, so I was using the new stuff. As well as learning the “Three NETs”, I read about it’s architecture and how it basically works. I also read about how to write the .NET CLS IL (Equivalent of ASM in native code). My god, it’s so much clearer than ASM!
The first thing to understand is that .NET apps are 100% portable, as long as you don’t tie yourself in down with non-portable libs. All .NET incarnations seemingly support the same small base, so across .NET apps, there is portability for all the basic functions. The small base seems the same across MS .NET, Mono and the rest of them.