C# in Depth

The .NET platform27■■C# (the version of the compiler that comes with the framework)Visual Studio—version number and codenameJust for kicks, we’ll throw in the Visual Basic numbering and naming too. (Visual Studiois abbreviated to VS and Visual Basic is abbreviated to VB for reasons of space.)Table 1.1 shows the different version numbers.Table 1.1Cross-reference table for versions of different products and technologies.NETFrameworklibraries (max)CLR C# Visual Studio Visual Basic1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 VS .NET 2002 (no codename) VB.NET 7.01.1 1.1 1.1 1.2 aVS .NET 2003 (Everett) VB.NET 7.12.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 VS 2005 (Whidbey) VB 8.03.0 3.0 2.0 2.0 VS 2005 (extension previews),VS 2008 (full support)VB 8.03.5 3.5 2.0 3.0 VS 2008 (Orcas) VB 9.0a. I’ve no idea why this isn’t 1.1. I only discovered that it was 1.2 while researching this book. That’s thenumbering according to Microsoft’s version of the specification, at least. I decided not to confuse mattersfurther by also including the ECMA-334 edition number here, although that’s another story in its own right.Note how both Visual Studio and Visual Basic lost the “.NET” moniker between 2003and 2005, indicating Microsoft’s emphasis on this being the tool for Windows development,as far as they’re concerned.As you can see, so far the version of the overall framework has followed the librariesexactly. However, it would be possible for a new version of the CLR with more capabilitiesto still be released with the existing libraries, so we could (for instance) have.NET 4.0 with libraries from 3.5, a CLR 3.0, and a C# 3 compiler. Let’s hope it doesn’tcome to that. As it is, Microsoft has already confounded developers somewhat with thelast two lines of the table..NET 3.0 is really just the addition of four libraries: Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows WorkflowFoundation (WF 7 ), and Windows CardSpace. None of the existing library classeswere changed, and neither was the CLR, nor any of the languages targeting the CLR,so creating a whole new major version number for this feels a bit over the top.Next comes .NET 3.5. This time, along with completely new classes (notably LINQ)there are many enhancements to the base class libraries (BCL—types within thenamespaces such as System, System.IO; the core of the framework libraries). There’s anew version of C#, without which this book would be considerably shorter, and a new versionof Visual Studio to support that and VB 9.0. Apparently all of that isn’t worth a majorversion number change, though. There are service packs for both .NET 2.0 and 3.0, and7Not WWF due to wrestling and wildlife conflicts.Licensed to Rhona Hadida