"With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time"
About this Quote
The line captures a core design promise of .NET: true language interoperability. Libraries are not bound to the language they were written in; they are bound to the runtime. When a developer ships an assembly, it carries rich metadata and a common intermediate language that the Common Language Runtime understands. Any .NET language that adheres to the Common Language Specification can consume that assembly without glue code, manual bindings, or separate wrappers. C#, F#, VB.NET, and others all see the same types, methods, and documentation immediately, right in their tooling.
This architectural choice flips the old model on its head. In the COM era or with native C libraries, every language needed adapters, IDLs, or foreign function interfaces. Each new API brought a tax of bindings and potential drift. By unifying around the Common Type System and a shared runtime, .NET removes much of that friction. Library authors focus on good API design and CLS compliance; consumers pick the language that fits their problem or team skill set. A game engine written in C# can be scripted in F#. A data pipeline prototyped in F# can be orchestrated from PowerShell. The ecosystem composes more naturally because everything speaks the same runtime dialect.
Miguel de Icaza emphasized this virtue throughout his work on Mono and later Xamarin, pushing .NET beyond Windows and showing that the interoperability promise holds across platforms as well as languages. The idea also accelerates discovery and productivity: once a package lands on NuGet, all languages get it at once, complete with IntelliSense, reflection, and debuggability.
There are practical nuances. Not every language feature projects perfectly; some idioms feel more at home in one language than another, and authors must avoid non-CLS constructs if they want universal reach. Interop with native code still uses P/Invoke. But the baseline remains powerful: publish once, and the API becomes a shared asset of the entire .NET family, reducing duplication, encouraging polyglot teams, and compounding value across the ecosystem.
This architectural choice flips the old model on its head. In the COM era or with native C libraries, every language needed adapters, IDLs, or foreign function interfaces. Each new API brought a tax of bindings and potential drift. By unifying around the Common Type System and a shared runtime, .NET removes much of that friction. Library authors focus on good API design and CLS compliance; consumers pick the language that fits their problem or team skill set. A game engine written in C# can be scripted in F#. A data pipeline prototyped in F# can be orchestrated from PowerShell. The ecosystem composes more naturally because everything speaks the same runtime dialect.
Miguel de Icaza emphasized this virtue throughout his work on Mono and later Xamarin, pushing .NET beyond Windows and showing that the interoperability promise holds across platforms as well as languages. The idea also accelerates discovery and productivity: once a package lands on NuGet, all languages get it at once, complete with IntelliSense, reflection, and debuggability.
There are practical nuances. Not every language feature projects perfectly; some idioms feel more at home in one language than another, and authors must avoid non-CLS constructs if they want universal reach. Interop with native code still uses P/Invoke. But the baseline remains powerful: publish once, and the API becomes a shared asset of the entire .NET family, reducing duplication, encouraging polyglot teams, and compounding value across the ecosystem.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coding & Programming |
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