C# is a simple, type-safe, object oriented, general-purpose programming language. Visual C# provides code-focused developers with powerful tools and language support to build rich, connected web and client applications on the .NET Framework.
C# is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft as part of the .NET initiative and later approved as a standard by ECMA and ISO. Anders Hejlsberg leads development of the C# language, which has a procedural, object-oriented syntax based on C++ and includes aspects of several other programming languages (most notably Delphi and Java) with a particular emphasis on simplification.
This article describes the language as defined in the ECMA and ISO standards, and avoids description of Microsoft's implementation. For a description of Microsoft's implementation, see Microsoft Visual C#.
Design goals for C#:
C# is intended to be a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language.
Because software robustness, durability, and programmer productivity are important, the language should include strong type checking, array bounds checking, detection of attempts to use uninitialized variables, Source code portability, and automatic garbage collection.
The language is intended for use in developing software components that can take advantage of distributed environments.
Programmer portability is very important, especially for those programmers already familiar with C and C++.
Support for internationalization is very important.
C# is intended to be suitable for writing applications for both hosted and embedded systems, ranging from the very large that use sophisticated operating systems, down to the very small having dedicated functions.
Although C# applications are intended to be economical with regards to memory and processing power requirements, the language was not intended to compete directly on performance and size with C or assembly language.
