What You Need to Use This Book

I developed the gotchas in this book through my explorations of .NET Framework 1.1 and the language versions, tools, and compilers that accompany it, all of which are available in any edition (beyond the Standard Edition) of Visual Studio 2003. You will need Visual Studio 2003 and .NET Framework 1.1 to run my examples. I have also tested each of the gotchas with .NET 2.0 Beta 1 (a.k.a. Whidbey) and have noted any changes in behavior. If you are using a later .NET 2.0 Beta, your experience may differ from mine, depending on the build version you are using. Comments on .NET 2.0 are based on Beta 1, which is subject to change. I think it is inappropriate to comment on the behavior of a product while it is in Beta 1, so I have not added any new gotchas spotted when working with .NET 2.0 Beta 1.