Intended Audience for This Book

It is important to understand the audience for whom this book was written so that you can know whether this book is for you. This book is targeted at software developers who wish to

• Understand the philosophy and architecture of the .NET Framework,

• Produce generic frameworks, libraries, classes, and tools to be used in the .NET Framework, and

• Use multiple languages to develop applications in the .NET Framework.

As this book is geared toward software developers, it not only describes the goals and architecture of the .NET Framework but also demonstrates how the technology implements features and services to meet these goals. Understanding the philosophy and architecture of .NET is important for all distributed system developers, even if they do not use the .NET Framework. Why? Because the .NET Framework represents Microsoft's vision of distributed systems development for the Internet. By understanding the architecture of the .NET Framework, developers gain insight into the issues associated with distributed systems development and Microsoft's solution to these issues.

Once developers have an understanding of the .NET Framework's architecture, the next step is to develop software that takes advantage of it. The .NET Framework is not an abstract programming model, but rather a full-featured system that allows developers to implement their solutions and then make them available to other developers in a robust and secure environment. As the .NET Framework is language agnostic , developers can use the right language to develop parts of a system and then merge these parts together at runtime, regardless of any language differences.

So who is this book not for? It is not an introduction to programming; readers should have experience developing software before reading this book. It is also not the definitive guide to all aspects of the .NET Framework or even to any single aspect of the .NET Framework. A book that covered in detail all aspects of the .NET Framework would be almost indigestible. Many books devoted to a single part of the .NET Framework, such as ASP.NET, are available. This book, in contrast, provides a solid overview of fundamental aspects of the .NET architecture. For in-depth information on individual aspects of the framework, such as the security system, readers must refer to other texts or specific documentation.