the only definitions or info i seem to find use lingo and jargon that apparantly would imply knowlege of the .NET stuff

anybody? ill rub your feet if you make me learned

10/28/2005 2:26:05 AM

i'm guessing a n00b question needs a n00b reply: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en

10/28/2005 4:10:02 AM

(Disclaimer: Don't kill me on how wrong this is ... its laymen's terms)

There are several languages that are used in programming. Java, C, C++, .NET, etc. Each of the languages has a "framework" which provides code other people have already written to do some simple/basic functionality, i.e. print text to a screen, store a number into memory, etc. The .NET framework is Microsoft's framework for the programming langauges it puts out. C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, ASP .NET, etc. There are several programs in Windows that need the .NET framework in order to work.

10/28/2005 6:19:33 AM

somebody needs to say something about managed code in order for any of this to make any sense.

10/28/2005 9:28:42 AM

blah blah blah managed code blah blah blah

yep

10/28/2005 11:40:41 AM

something I needed to put on my PDA to make certain games run

10/28/2005 1:57:32 PM

Outside of development the ATI Catalyst Control Center is the only program I've seen that requires it. Even then you are better off just installing the drivers as the control center + .net will eat about 40MB of RAM at startup.

[Edited on October 28, 2005 at 2:46 PM. Reason : ,]

10/28/2005 2:45:58 PM

also, any code coming out of ATI is pure shit.

10/28/2005 2:50:47 PM

The .NET framework is a language independent/platform independent framework whose focal point is the CLR (common language run-time). .NET has its own internal language that everything targeted to it compiles to, called IL (intermediate language). The CLR then at run-time compiles the IL (JIT) to platform native code.

This is very important; this grants both platform independence and even cooler, language independence.

This means that as long as a language can target .NET IL, then you can write .NET with it. This is why you have C#, managed C++.NET, VB.NET, etc etc (I think there are ~14 enabled languages right now that can target .NET). Actually, there are a lot more, here is a list:

http://www.startvbdotnet.com/dotnet/languages.aspx

This allows programmers to leverage their strengths (current programming knowledge) and apply it to .NET with minimal retraining (which is why VB.NET exists, bleh). Since the objects are actually implemented in IL, then as long as the language supports writing the IL necessary to access these classes, then you are golden. This also means that anything written to .NET is interoperable with any other language targeting .NET. This is a replacement for COM, which provided a binary interface (horrid, just horrid), so that any language could use a COM object regardless of what language it was written in.

This means that I could write a killer UI widget in C# and then someone else could take that widget and use it from VB, with NONE of the headache of IDLs and marshalling data that made COM so much fun.

However, platform independence here is a bit of a misnomer since windows and compact devices are currently the only platforms with .NET available for it (although an open source project called Monohttp://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page is working on a port to *NIX).


I should also note that all this runs in a "managed" environment, essentially what CSC types like to call a "sandbox". Everything essentially works in a nice, safe virtual world. Garbarge collection is handled by the CLR which removes the headaches of orphaned pointers and other such nonsense that makes C++ such a terrible language (that I programmed in for 6+ years, yay).

Also, ASP.NET is a really, really nice layer for developing web applications that can leverage the same business objects and DAL's written in traditional .NET winform applications. However, they can expose them with purely server side pages, which is crazy easy to do, or to be really cool you do everything with no postbacks and AJAX (web services + javascript).

[Edited on October 28, 2005 at 3:17 PM. Reason : .]

10/28/2005 3:12:44 PM

Let me guess, trying to get Videora to convert VOB files to mp4 for your new iPod video?

10/28/2005 4:34:54 PM

ok

10/29/2005 6:14:51 AM

lmao wtf did you originally want?

10/29/2005 6:16:03 AM