.Net Umbrella

“Have you ever imagined if there were no computers in our life, how our life would have been?” Evolution of computers gave birth to many number of opportunities for human beings. Counting machine was considered first ever computer. To throw a spotlight on few historical calculating devices let’s look at some of the examples- Chinese Abacus(200BC), Egyptian Abacus(500BC), Napier’s Bone(1620-John Napier), Pascaline(1653- Blaise Pascal), Leibniz’s(1673-Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz). These were the devices which formed the basic step in origination of First Generation computers. Gradually, as the dusk of these computers, the new generation computer came and it changed the era. Everything started depending upon computers. It took only 55 years for fourth generation to evolve. We are using Fourth Generation Computers advanced technology. That was a brief about computer. Now let us check out how computer works.

Give some instruction and it will perform something according to you. Computers are originated by humans and it works according to them. So these set of instructions were the onset of programming language. They are purely written language and are difficult to read aloud, which would make no sense to a layman. There has to be an intermediate between humans and computers. This intermediate is known as compiler, which converts the programming language into machine readable code which is understood by a computer and produces a desired result in human readable form. There are scores of programming language which has its advantages and disadvantages. We will learn brief about .Net and its programming languages.

It was Microsoft’s initiative to give the whole world a common platform for languages where a developer who can migrate easily from one language to another. The platform was called .NET Framework. Languages supported by .NET Framework are:- Visual Basic .NET, Visual C# .NET ,Visual C++ .NET, Transact-SQL, Scripting Languages like- Windows Script Host, VBScript, Jscript, JScript.NET, Extensible Markup Language (XML), Visual J++, Alternative Languages like- COBOL for Microsoft .NET, Perl for Microsoft .NET, Eiffel for Microsoft .NET, Python for Microsoft .NET, Pascal for Microsoft .NET, Mercury for Microsoft .NET, Mondrian for Microsoft .NET, Oberon for Microsoft .NET, Salford FTN95 (Fortran) for Microsoft .NET, SmallTalk for Microsoft .NET,Standard ML for Microsoft .NET, Dyalog APL for Microsoft .NET and many more.

C# is one of the most popular programming languages which come under .NET umbrella. Its development was led by “Anders Hejlsberg”, who previously had designed “Turbo Pascal” and “Borland Delphi” like framework. Its syntax is similar to C++ language which is not a part of .Net but the mother of all languages. The name “C sharp” was inspired by musical notation where a sharp indicates that semitone higher in pitch. This is similar to the language name of C++, where “++” indicates that a variable should be incremented by 1.The sharp symbol also resembles a ligature of four “+”, further implying that the language is an increment of C++. Its 70% java, 10% C++, 5%Visual basic, and 15 % new in itself. Concepts like LINQ, Silverlight, Crystal reports were major areas which made it different from other programming languages. Apart from C#.Net language, another popular web programming language is ASP.NET. The syntax is quite similar to C# and this language is used to build enterprise class Web Applications with minimum of coding. ASP.NET is part of the .NET Framework, and when coding ASP.NET applications you have access to classes in the .NET Framework. You can code your applications in any language compatible with the common language runtime (CLR), including Microsoft Visual Basic and C#. These languages enable you to develop ASP.NET applications that benefit from the common language runtime, type safety, inheritance, and so on.

To wrap up, we can say that .NET framework is the backbone of many software applications running on Windows operating system and provides common functionality. Object Orientation is the key feature which treats the real world into an Object. It provides easy environment to execute code and debug wherever necessary. .NET Framework gives robustness to create applications such as Windows-based applications and Web-based applications. With .NET framework, technology works like miracles.