Preface

Every 10 years or so, a new approach to programming hits like a tsunami. In the early 1980s, the new technologies were Unix, which could be run on a desktop, and a powerful new language called C, developed by AT&T. The early 90s brought Windows and C++. Each of these developments represented a sea change in the way we approached programming. Now, .NET and C# are the next wave, and this book is intended to help you ride it.

Microsoft has "bet the company" on .NET. When a company of their size and influence spends billions of dollars and reorganizes its entire corporate structure to support a new platform, programmers take notice. It turns out that .NET represents a major change in the way you'll think about programming. It is, in short, a new development platform designed to facilitate object-oriented Internet development. The programming language of choice for this platform is C#, which builds on the lessons learned from C (high performance), C++ (object-oriented structure), Java (garbage collection, high security), and Visual Basic (rapid development) to create a new language ideally suited for developing component-based, n-tier distributed web applications.