.NET 4 Adds Parallel Libraries, Dynamic Languages

The .NET Framework 4, which ships with Visual Studio 2010, includes new code libraries and APIs to help developers exploit the computational throughput offered by parallel hardware architectures. .NET 4 also adds support for dynamic programming languages, such as Ruby and Python, already popular for coding Linux-based Web sites because of the flexible development experience they offer. However, the parallelism enhancements require code modification to use and the dynamic language support is aimed at new development projects, so the additions won’t improve existing code automatically.

.NET Framework Overview

The .NET Framework includes the Common Language Runtime (CLR), a software component for running and loading applications; and class libraries, hierarchically organized collections of code that developers can use in their applications to build interfaces, access databases and files, and communicate over the Web.

Microsoft’s C# and Visual Basic (VB) languages require the .NET Framework. Source code developed in these languages is compiled into managed code (using a portable intermediate language) at development time. The code is called managed because rather than instructions being sent directly to the CPU, the CLR enforces basic rules that prevent applications from interfering with one another and performs many low-level tasks, such as memory allocation and garbage collection. The main benefits of this managed code approach are greater reliability and security, and a uniform environment across programming languages. The CLR then compiles the managed code into native code (using binary language specific to a CPU architecture and OS) at run time.