Common Language Runtime (CLR) in .Net

Before C# we have to language in the C family C/C++.

Using C or C++ our application compiler translated our code into name code (machine code).

Which means if I wrote an application in C++ on a Windows machine with 8086 processor architecture the compiler will translate our code into native code (machine code).

What if we have different hardware ?!! What if we have a different operating system ?!!

Ans: that will not run😔

When Microsoft was designing C# and .Net framework they came with an idea that they borrowed from the Java community.

So now when you compile C# code the result will be intermediate language (IL) code.

Now we need something that would translate that IL code into native code (machine code) that is the job of CLR (common language runtime).

So CLR is essentially an application that is set in the memory whose job is to translate the LI code to machine code, and this process is called just-in-time compilation (JIT).

So with this architecture, you can write an application in C# and you don't have to worry about compiling that into native code for different machines as long as the machine has CLR that can run your application😄