Some other advantages of using the .NET Framework

• Various programming languages are available for writing code. The .NET Framework provides the following languages - Visual Basic.NET, Visual C#.NET, Visual J# (Microsoft's version of Java language) and Visual C++.NET. Apart from these languages, several other popular languages have their versions available for the .NET Framework. This means that a developer can choose a language for writing code.
• Code written in one language can be accessed by applications written in another language. For example, if one developer writes a piece of code in Visual Basic, another developer can use that code for an application written in C#. This is called `Language Inter-operability'.
• Working with data is always a complicated task in any programming language but is also the most common task that a developer needs to do. The .NET Framework makes this a lot easier with ADO.NET. ADO.NET is a collection of pre-written codes, used for working with data. In some cases, we can perform the data handling without writing any code at all!
• The Framework provides the ASP.NET technology for developing feature-rich, interactive web applications.
• The .NET Framework is based on `Object Oriented Programming' principles. Programs written using these principles are easy to understand and modify.

Using the .NET Framework for application development gives many significant advantages. Once the Framework and the development tool is installed, all we need to learn is the programming language.

Throughout this tutorial, we are going to use Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition for developing C# applications. The next chapter will introduce us to this tool and how to use it for our purpose.