Question

So with Microsoft .NET, you get the advantage of language interoperability. But I’ve heard that this is slower than native applications. What if you only need one language? Then what are the advantages. I am a C and C++ programmer, and .net seems to be heavily tied with C#. Is this the case? And is dot net portable, or tied to windows?

And lastly, is .net worth taking a look at, from the perspective of a C++ programmer who doesn’t need language interoperability?

Thankyou.

Answer 1

‘.NET is slow’ is a misconception, along with ‘Java is slow’. Yes, it used to be slower than native, and yes, you can get faster programs using hand-optimized assembly, but for nearly all cases short of core engine code for games, .NET is as fast as doing the same thing in C or C++, and can (in some cases) be faster.

You also get the huge benefit of automatic memory management (so you can new a heap object and then just forget about it), and a large class library at your disposal.