Nevertheless, contrary to C++, C# is not really an extension of C, it only shares syntax and some key elements, but it is entirely different in the way it works and its applications and general purposes. In this article, we will further look into its applications, interesting features, and current release characteristics.

C# was developed as a language for the Microsoft API .NET. In layman’s terms, C# is a framework language that allows applications to be directly developed in the .NET environment. C# is a part of the common language runtime in .NET, what basically happens when C# speaks in the .NET framework is that it compiles code in other languages and feeds it to the machine in a way that it can understand, irrespective of the original code language. This makes .NET an extremely efficient solution for multidisciplinary programmers that want to develop applications in Windows.

There are many extremely interesting uses and features of C#, we can speak of the way that it is multiparadigmatic, meaning that it has features of object-oriented programming, it has functional programming features, and therefore is extremely useful for different applications that may require a different paradigm each time. C# is therefore very flexible and can have extremely different uses. The Windows Installer runs on C#, but even the Paint.NET photo editing application runs in this language, which shows how versatile and reliable the language is.

Releases

C# was developed in 2000 and approved by ECMA and ISO until 2003.
We are currently in C#9.0, released in September 2020, where the version below is C#8.0, released in September 2019.