From: Stephen Kellett Date: 2007-09-28T21:25:16+09:00 Subject: Re: Anyone interested In IronRuby In message , Lloyd Linklater writes >That being said, I have another question. What exactly *is* dot net? A virtual machine (the Common Language Runtime). A very efficient one. ".Net" is the marketing term for the CLR and the frameworks that come with it. >Why is it so fervently touted? Same reason Java is. In theory, write once, run anywhere there is a CLR. You can write for .Net in C/C++/C#/Visual Basic/Delphi/Fortran/Cobol/Python/Ruby. >At work, a MS devotee that was >contracting at work changed our setup from .NET 1.1 to 2.0 without >telling anyone. It brought down the entire data warehouse. That is possible. ECMA added some new opcodes (4 if I remember correctly) and those got implemented in .Net 2.0. So if you build your app with .Net 2.0 but then deployed that on a .Net 1.0/.Net 1.1 runtime that would fail. That is not a failure of backward compatibility, that is a failure caused by human stupidity. .Net is backwards compatible - you can run 1.0 .Net apps on the 1.1 or 2.0 runtime. You can run 1.1 .Net apps on the 2.0 runtime. Stephen -- Stephen Kellett Object Media Limited http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/software.html Computer Consultancy, Software Development Windows C++, Java, Assembler, Performance Analysis, Troubleshooting Reg Office: 24 Windmill Walk, Sutton, Ely, Cambs CB6 2NH.