I check out a book (C# and the .NET Platform) a while ago. After reading the intros it seems to me that .NET is pretty vast and has ambitious goals. It also seems possible that any platform should be able to run applications with any .NET compliant (to the CLS, CLR, and CTS) language, as long as Microsoft ports the .NET runtime to it. Am I right in saying this or could someone please explain better what''s going on the .NET runtime side of things? "Ogun''s Laughter Is No Joke!!!" - Ogun Kills On The Right, A Nigerian Poem.

You''re pretty much right.

.NET is a marketing name for a few nifty things:
- MSIL. An intermediate language all .NET compliant languages compile to. Managed C++, C#, VB, etc. are all eventually reduced to MSIL. This means you can choose the language of your liking and have pretty much the same effect.
- An excellent JIT / Runtime. The first time you run your .NET application, the MSIL code is compiled into native code. That''s right, there is no virtual machine garbage slowing you down. I found that my .NET code runs as fast (and sometimes faster due to superb memory management) then native code.
- The security model. I have little experience with it, so I can''t comment.
- An excellent class library. With a huge set of classes designed to do pretty much anything, you''ll be very well off. As you use the class library you''ll find that it''s *very* well designed, consistant, functional, etc.

In general Microsoft shipped .NET with great tools and documentation. I found .NET to be everything Java ever promised to be, but failed to live up to.

Incidentally, Portable.NET 0.5.4 was released today. It works quite nicely on a number of non-Windows platforms.

EbonySeraph: You are right, they should run on any platform. Although, be aware, this is not a new idea. One of the most popular lanaguages that also compile to byte code to run on a virtual machine is Java. So .NET is not really a new idea, although I like it ceause it just doesnt seem as slow as Java.