C# 5.0 Unleashed

A Historical Perspective

It’s a general truth that you will have a better understanding of today’s affairs when you appreciate the past. Total overhauls of software platforms or revolutions in the way we think about programming do not occur that often, but when they happen, the lessons learned from the past play a central role in the design of the future. The .NET platform is no exception to this rule.

Let me raise a question to start the discussion. Why is it that the Windows boot screen has shown the year 1985 in the copyright caption for a long time? The answer is shockingly simple: because the core application programming interfaces (APIs) of the operating system go all the way back to that time, a quarter of a century ago. Obviously, ever ...