VB – Bringing .NET Programming To You
New Things in VB.NET and the .NET Framework
Some other examples of .NET Framework implemented services include:- Technology Independence
- Automatic Memory Management
- Explicit Standardized Version Management
The world and Microsoft have both learned that it's better to let people decide which operating systems and programming language to use. The .NET Framework also includes something called the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). This is a specification defining how to create a .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), the part of .NET that interfaces with a particular programming language like VB.NET. This specification has been published and submitted to the ECMA as an independent standard. (There are some obvious competitive considerations that come into play here, but this is about technology and not commerce. The bottom line is that The .NET Framework is by design ready for quick portability to other operating systems and languages. Whether this actually happens depends on more than just technology.)
Or, as it is sometimes known, 'Garbage Collection'. Microsoft has taken a black eye from developers for years because there is no comprehensive way to prevent programmers from creating code with bugs in it that ultimately consumes all of the memory available in your system until it crashes. Visual Basic itself doesn't cause this problem, but if you use a program object (which might be written in C++, assembler, or some other language) that does have this problem, your system crashes and your boss blames you! This is clearly something that needs to happen outside the development language and VB.NET benefits from a new .NET Framework that does it!
The number one complaint heard at Help Desks around the world might be, "But I didn't change anything!"
Yeah, right! But when the system crashes, you know that something changed and the number one solution is to back out whatever isn't working and go back to what used to work. That's fine when your systems are all updated through a rigidly controlled and thoroughly implemented change control system. But keep in mind that changes can come from anywhere. They can result in an upgrade to your database software, your operating system, your web server software ... the list is endless. The real answer is to let the operating system itself make sure that anything and everything can be backed out to the previous version. That way, as a programmer, you can focus on getting that processing logic right rather than worrying about how long it take to get your new program version threaded through that rigidly controlled and thoroughly bureaucratic change control system.
