Programming in the . NET Environment

Understanding the philosophy and architecture of .NET is important for any Microsoft developer. The .NET Framework is not an abstract programming model. It is 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. This book shows developers how to produce generic frameworks, libraries, classes, and tools to be used in the .NET Framework. It also shows how to use the right language to develop parts of a system and then incorporate these parts together at runtime regardless of language differences. The book will conclude with a series of appendices from contributors who are very active in the .NET community.

Damien Watkins is the founder of Project 42, a consulting company specializing in the development of Component Based Systems for the Internet. Until 2002 he was a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Damien became involved with the development of the .NET Framework in 1998 when Microsoft invited Monash University to join Project 7, an early access program for .NET.

Mark Hammond has been an independent software consultant since 1995. He has produced many of the Windows extensions for Python, including PythonWin, Active Scripting and Active Debugging support, and coauthored the Python/COM framework and extensions. In 2000 he published his first book, Python Programming on Win32, and from 1999 through 2001 developed the first .NET implementation of the Python language.

Brad Abrams was a founding member of both the Common Language Runtime and .NET Framework teams at Microsoft, where he is currently a Lead Program Manager. Brad has been involved with WinFX and Windows Vista efforts from the beginning. His primary role is to ensure consistency and developer productivity of the .NET Framework through Vista and beyond. His popular blog can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/BradA/.