Programming Windows: What is .NET? (Premium)

Developers curious about the future of the Microsoft developer stack filed into PDC 2000 in Orlando to learn more about .NET in July 2000. It was an information-packed event, with lots of new technology and terminology. But what most developers were looking for was some clarity after the vague messaging that Microsoft had provided at Forum 2000. Exactly what was .NET, really? And how did the nuts-and-bolts implementation of this technology map to the vague promo videos that Microsoft had provided a month earlier?

According to Microsoft’s day one documentation, .NET is “Microsoft’s strategy for delivering software as a service.” It would consist of three main components, the Microsoft .NET platform, various Microsoft .NET products and services, and third-party .NET services. Here, of course, we are concerned with the first of those three components. Which leads us naturally to the next question: what is the .NET platform?

Here, again, I will turn to the original documentation, which notes somewhat vaguely that it includes the .NET infrastructure needed to operate a new generation of services, the tools needed to build a new generation of services, a new .NET user experience to “enable rich clients,” .NET building block services, and .NET device software to enable a new generation of smart Internet devices.

That’s a lot of stuff. And it is interesting to note, some 20 years later, which parts of that Microsoft delivered, immediately or over time, and which parts it did not. For example, the .NET user experience---which was heavily evident in the Forum 2000 and PDC 2000 keynotes in Spring 2000, never came together in a meaningful way. It eventually found a home at MSN, which evolved over time from Internet connectivity software, similar to AOL, to an online content hub, and then a set of tools that enhanced Windows for the Internet. We also saw leaked imagery of Windows Blackcomb that featured this UI, but Blackcomb was later canceled, and its replacement project, Longhorn, went in a different direction.

But the core piece of the .NET infrastructure, the underlying plumbing that made .NET possible in the first place, the .NET Framework, was available immediately, at least in beta form. The developer attendees of PDC 2000 received the first external bits on CD so that they could see where Microsoft was heading.
Historical aside: Given the pervasive nature of broadband connectivity today, it is perhaps not obvious that the Internet of 2000 was quite different and consisted mostly of slow dial-up access. Those developers who didn’t attend PDC 2000 could get the .NET Framework SDK from Microsoft as a single 110 MB download or as a dial-up friendly 11-part download. But the software giant also offered to mail developers the code on CD.
So, what’s the .NET Framework?

According to the original documentation, the. NET Framework is an environment for building, deploying, and running web services and other application...