Dot Net for Beginners

Dot Net is the product of Microsoft. It is one of the prestigious products launched as a competitor to Java. While Java stood out with its platform independence Dot Net is famed for it's multi language compatibility.
This is aimed for beginners into dot Net, people migrating from other domains into DotNet.
I shall try to keep this as simple as possible while covering all the aspects.
Contents:
1. Introduction to Dot Net
2. Dot Net Framework
3. Asp.Net
4. C#
5. VB.Net

Introduction to Dot Net:

• It is platform independent
• It supports many programming languages
• .NET provides a common set of classes which can be accessed from other .Net programming languages.
• Basically .Net is a framework

.Net Framework:
It is a new, easy, and extensive programming platform. It supports several programming languages. By default .NET comes with few programming languages including C#, VB.NET, J# and managed C++ .NET is a common platform for all the supported languages. It gives a common class library, which can be called from any of the supported languages. So, developers need not learn many libraries when they switch to a different language making it easier to switch between languages. Only the syntax differs between the languages.

When you write code in any language and compile, it will be converted to an 'Intermediate Language' (Microsoft Intermediate Language - MSIL). So, your compiled executable contains the IL and not really executable machine language. When the .NET application runs, the .NET framework in the target computer take care of the execution. (To run a .NET application, the target computer should have .NET framework installed.) The .NET framework converts the calls to .NET class libraries to the corresponding APIs of the Operating system.

Whether you write code in C# or VB.NET, you are calling methods in the same .NET class libraries. The same .NET framework executes the C# and VB.NET applications. So, there won't be any performance difference based on the language you write code.

H/W and S/W requirements to learn .Net:
Please have the following installed on your system before we embark the journey into .Net.
.Net framework 2.0,3.0 or 3.5
Visual studio 2005 or 2008
that should be enough to get you started with . In future .Net may come packaged with windows making life easier.
We will continue with .Net in my next post.
Hope you enjoyed your stay on this page.