1. C# and .NET language

Designed by Microsoft's Anders Heljsberg, C# is an object-oriented programming language, combining elements mainly from C/C++ and Java. In C#, as in all languages from this family (C++, Eiffel, Smalltalk, Java), being object-oriented means that everything is an object, including, in C#'s case, the basic types, which all have an object representation. An object is the grouping together in a single entity of a data structure and methods for manipulating this data structure.

We assume that the reader is familiar with object-oriented languages. If this is not the case, a number of Engineering Techniques files may be useful. These include, on object-oriented languages, on the C++ language and on the Java language. Java and C# are macroscopically similar, the essential difference being in the libraries.