What are the Main objectives for developing .Net Framework?

Question

Vulpes · Answer

To be of any practical use all programming languages need some kind of runtime library to provide basic functionality so that the programmer doesn't have to write all this for himself/herself. The .NET Framework is simply the runtime library for the .NET languages (C# VB.NET C++/CLI F# etc) and is very extensive with basic classes for almost everything you could want. As such the Framework needs to adhere to the Common Language Specification (CLS) which is a set of rules which all .NET languages should support. The basic Framework has also been standardized by ECMA and ISO which allows other versions of .NET (such as Mono) to be developed by third parties.