General .NET Terms

Term Definition
Runtime A collection of services that are required to execute a given compiled unit of code.
Common Language Runtime (CLR) Primarily locates, loads, and managed .NET objects. The CLR also handles memory management, application hosting, coordination of threads, performaing security checks, and other low-level details.
Managed code Code that compiles and runs on .NET runtime. C#/F#/VB are examples.
Unmanaged code Code that compiles straight to machine code and cannot be directly hosted by the .NET runtime. Contains no free memory management, garbage collection, etc. DLLs created from C/C++ are examples.
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