Unified Type System

One of the key features of any development environment is its type system. After all, a development environment with a limited amount of types or a system that limits the programmer's ability to extend the system-supplied types isn't an environment with a long life expectancy. The .NET runtime does more than just give the developer a single, unified type system that is used across all CLS-compliant languages. It also lets language writers extend the type system by adding new types that look and act just like the system built-in types. This means that you, as a developer, can use all typesin a uniform manner, regardless of whether they are .NET predefined types or user-created types. I'll discuss the details of the type system and how the C# compiler supports it in Chapter 4, "The Type System." -