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Overview of C sharp
C# is an offshoot of C and C++ that is designed for rapid development of Web services for Microsoft's new .NET platform. C# is derived from C++ and has much of the power of C++ while improving on it in many respects from the point of view of the developer who needs to rapidly create and deploy applications in the e-economy.
The main weaknesses of C++ as a development environment are its complicated code-compile-debug development cycle, its potential of creating memory leaks that are difficult to troubleshoot, and the requirement of having applications explicitly manage memory resources. C# is similar to the Java platform developed by Sun Microsystems in that memory resources and garbage collection (object lifetime management) are automatically handled by the language itself, freeing developers to work on creating applications instead of being bothered by handling these intricate details. C# also simplifies access to external objects and simplifies the object creation process compared with C++. And although C++ applications require frequent use of include files to allow access to system services, in C# these services are transparently wrapped in objects. Like Java, C# thus relieves programmers of much of the chore of object and memory management, speeding up the development cycle in the process.
On the other hand, C# is unlike Java in that it maintains powerful features such as pointers, passing arguments through reference, overloading operators, and manually allocating memory. These features, basic to C++, are included in C# to provide programmers with the functionality should they need it, but they are deemphasized in C# compared to their common use in C++. For example, when pointers are used in C#, they need to be tagged in a section of code marked as "unsafe," making it easier to troubleshoot difficulties that may arise from their misapplication. Furthermore, C# has the advantage over Java of providing direct access to native Microsoft Windows services, and C# is easier to learn than Java for C++ programmers because its syntax is derived from and is similar to C++, whereas the syntax for Java has many differences from C++ that make it difficult for C++ programmers to use easily.
It is relatively simple to port existing C++ programs to C# (by contrast, it is much more difficult to port such applications to Java). The main disadvantage of C# as a development environment is a weakness shared with Java: unlike C++, which compiles programs into native machine code, C# compiles programs into an intermediate bytecode called intermediate language (IL) that is then interpreted by the .NET runtime. This means C# shares a performance hit similar to Java, which is also an interpreted platform. C++ will still be used for writing code modules where the best performance possible is required (such as device drivers), but C# performs sufficiently well on today's hardware platforms to be used as a primarily development platform. And because C# executes on the .NET runtime, it shares the interoperability features of this runtime, which allows modules written in C# to communicate with code written using other programming languages.
Microsoft plans to submit the C# language to the standards board of the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA). The ECMA will then manage the language as a standard, which means that third parties wanting to use C# to develop applications will not be required to pay licensing fees to Microsoft. This will keep the cost of development tools and applications development low.