Someone wanted to know how to pronounce C# and what it's association was with the other C languages. Here is a little primer for everyone's reference.
The language is pronounced "sea sharp", and it is an ECMA standard. Since most search engines don't index the # symbol, and you rarely see it in a URL you will often see it written C-Sharp online. Although Microsoft invented the language, there are other implementations of it. Visual C# is Microsoft's implementation of the C# language.It is related to other C languages (C and C++) by the fact that it uses the C syntax. Also Microsoft wants to replace the previous dominate languages of C, C++ and Java (also a C syntax language) with C#, so they gave it a name that made it look like the predecessor to C and C++.
The difference between C and C++ was the move from procedural or functional programming to object orientated programming. The big difference with C# is the removal of pointers and working within the .NET framework. There is no use of C# outside of the .NET CLI (Common Language Infrastructure), which is also an ECMA standard.Keep in mind that Microsoft isn't the only one to implement that framework though. There is a number of other implementations, with the most notable one being the MONO Project, which is a cross platform open source implementation of the CLI Framework and the C# langauge.
Interestingly, how C++ got its name is that in the C language there is a ++ operator that takes the value of a variable, increases it by one, and then uses that value. So to write C++ is to say C = C + 1. Which means the C++ language takes the C language, improves it, and continues using it.To get the name C# Microsoft took the double pluses from C++ and they moved the first plus up a little bit, and the second plus down a little bit, then they moved them closer together so they overlapped. If you clean that up then you have the # symbol in C#.
Subject Tags: [Programming] [Langauge] [Trivia] [Software] [Microsoft] [Mono] [ECMA] [Standard] [Java] [CLI] [CSharp]
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