[ACCEPTED]-Is it C# or C#.NET?-programming-languages

C# is a language, .NET is platform.

There 2 are lot of languages on .NET: C#, Visual 1 Basic, IronRuby and more.

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The other answers are close but not quite right.

• C# is the language, it is specified in an ISO standard.
• .NET is the platform from Microsoft.
• Visual C# .NET was the name of the developer tool in 2002. The name was shortened to "Visual C#" with the 2003 release. The more popular, expansive cousin is "Visual Studio". Subsequent to 2003, Microsoft dropped the independent commercial product called "Visual C#" (along with Visual Basic .NET) and introduced the free Express products. The current version is called Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, some people call it "Visual C# Express" for short.

In 8 the same way, there is C++, and there is 7 "Visual C++". The former is a language, the 6 latter is a tool from Microsoft that you 5 can use to write/compile/test/debug apps 4 in the language, on Windows. (But again, most 3 people use "Visual Studio" , which includes 2 all the capabilities of Visual C# and Visual 1 C++)

Basically,

• C# is the language you're programming in.
• .NET if the framework you're programming against.

The combination is C#.NET. There's 2 also VB.NET, C++.NET, for when you're programming 1 in VB/C++ against the .NET framework.

The language is C#, and the framework/platform 7 it runs on is .NET. C# is purely a .NET 6 language, there is no variant of it that 5 is targeted on another platform, unlike 4 for instance Visual Basic (this is why VB 3 and VB.NET can mean different things).

But 2 C# is always "C#.NET" and is called just 1 C#.

When people say they are using "C#.Net", they 2 mean they are developing on the .Net platform 1 while using C#

"VB or VB.NET" makes sense as there are 9 both .NET and non-.NET versions of the language. It 8 does not make sense with C# because there 7 is only a .NET version.

Similar with ASP 6 and ASP.NET. The non-.NET version is usually 5 called "Classic ASP."

I've never heard the 4 C# language referred to as "C# .NET" but I guess 3 you could reasonably use that term (even 2 if it's a little redundant.)

So don't worry, there 1 is only one C# language.

The C# language is only used with the .NET 15 Framework. So when people say C#, it always 14 means C# on the .NET Framework. Since C# isn't 13 used with any other frameworks (as of writing 12 this) the .NET in C#.NET is redundant.

Visual 11 Basic on the other hand can either be the 10 old VB Runtime or VB.NET. So VB needs the 9 .NET qualification so you really know what 8 you language you are really talking about 7 because VB 6 and VB.NET are pretty different.

When 6 I hear someone say C#.NET, it is usually 5 from someone who isn't a programmer. Most 4 recruiters see .NET appended to things like 3 VB, Visual Studio and ASP, so they naturally 2 append it to C# because for them, it is 1 easier to just think everything is .NET.

There was a time when the marketing guys 17 at Microsoft were sticking the suffix ".NET" on 16 to every MS product they could. Sometimes 15 it made sense - e.g. to distinguish VB 6.0, and 14 earlier versions, from what came after. Other 13 times it was just marketing phooee; at one 12 point I think they were going to rechristen 11 all the server products with the .NET suffix: Windows.NET Server, SharePoint.NET Services etc.

But 10 it was a short-lived phenomenon and quickly 9 dropped (in some cases before the products 8 were actually launched).

In the case of C#, there 7 was no earlier version and only later the 6 prospect of publishing the spec and seeing 5 other implementations, so it made little 4 difference whether it was called C#.NET or just 3 C#.

I guess that's just marketing guys for 2 you - they did exactly the same with the 1 "Active" prefix before that...

The language is C#. C# is also a popular 6 language on the NET platform, so people 5 often say C#.NET. The same thing used to 4 happen for C++, where people would call 3 it Visual C++. In both cases, what they 2 really mean is C# using .NET and C++ using 1 MFC.

C# is language. But it's always C#.net because 4 C# language added to the Visual Studio Family 3 when the Visual Studio.NET released.

In 2 Visual Studio 6, C# was not there.

In Visual 1 Stuio .NET in 2002/2003, C# was introduced.