Hi, I'm a beginner,but I am a little good at using "C++". I've heard of ".Net", but never really knew what it was used for. Can anyone tell me what is '.Net'? what people use it for? why is it useful? and reasons to learn it? if anyone can help me out, go ahead, I'm listening. thanks!!! :)

.Net is a platform for the creation and executions of IL (intermediate languages) programs. Microsoft provides compilers for different languages and a huge library. C# is a java -like language that has been created from scratch for .Net (in my opinion it is simply the nicest languages I ever used).
Once you have written the program, the compiler translates it to IL (this step is similar to java). Before execution the code (or at least part of it)is compiled into native machine code by the .net runtime enviroment.

You can find many informations on wikipedia page abount .Net framework

In a nutshell .NET is software from Microsoft created for you to use for all future applications since it greatly simplies your coding with it's large library of pre-coded solutions to common programming problems.
If it makes your work easier I'd say it's useful.
And it's a no-brainer to use highly tested code to make less work for you when writing your own programs instead of rolling your own;)

Quote:Original post by Xai
C# is a Java like language written by Microsoft. .NET is the Java like platform it runs on. Google it. Its a clean, simple language.

I'm sorry, but that's really the worst explanation of what .NET actually is. .NET is far more than just 1 single programming language.

.NET is a software development platform build on a standard specifying how languages interact with the platform itself. .NET allows programmers to program applications in a multitude of programming languages, without having to worry about how to have these languages interact with each other. Interaction is done by the Common Language Runtime, which is in essence the Virtual Machine.

The platform itself has a massive standard library, ranging from standard collections, to Xml support, sockets and even web programming.

.NET is quite complex to explain in short, so try reading the Wikipedia article on it

Toolmaker