# Sunday, 10 December 2006

The title isn't mine, it's Charles Petzold's, and I would be quite surprised if you didn't learn things about C++/CLI just by learning things about the .NET Framework. In other words, you don't need to plan to switch to C# to get some benefit of this free e-book. It was originally supposed to be a chapter, but ended up over 250 pages long.

I know people still need this material. I have a new mentoring client with an established team of C++ developers who are just looking at moving to the .NET Framework. I came and did a "what is .NET" talk for them, with diagrams like this:

 

If you already recognize these pictures and realize what they are supposed to illustrate, then you don't need the e-book. But if you haven't really paid much attention to the .NET Framework, then this is a fairly painless way to learn a lot of it. The thing is, it's all C#. My suggestion to you is to bear with that -- a C++ programmer can read C# without too much difficulty -- and then come on back here to see how to do the same things using idioms you already know and love, and how to drop back into native code any time you like for various reasons include control over your application's performance.

Kate

Sunday, 10 December 2006 13:45:07 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #