Where can I read the original C# introduction paper by Microsoft?

Question

When Microsoft presented .NET Framework and C# language in 2002, what was the first article to introduce C#?

I'm looking for some paper published on MSDN or Microsoft website that would explain the need for another language, talk some background and maybe have some code samples.

Also, I'm interested in the original C# introduction, not in a generic .NET Framework document.

I remember that early .NET papers were rather foggy and while it is a fair share of fun to re-read them, I aim for a language-centric document.

Binary Worrier · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-08T16:54:31.650

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From MSDN Magazine September 2000

I've an odd - 11 year old - feeling that I read this at the time, and went . . . meh

Many developers wish there was a language that was easy to write, read, and maintain like Visual Basic, but that still provided the power and flexibility of C++. For those developers, the new C# language is here. Microsoft has built C# with type-safety, garbage collection, simplified type declarations, versioning and scalability support, and lots of other features that make developing solutions faster and easier, especially for COM+ and Web Services. This article gives you a first look at C#, a language you are

C# is Cool September 2000

Also, good article On the History of .Net & C# here by James Kovacs

edited Aug 08 '11 at 16:54

answered Aug 08 '11 at 16:48

Binary Worrier

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IIRC, Cool was a code name for C# :-) – Kate Gregory Aug 08 '11 at 17:04
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@Kate: Indeed; it stood for "C-like Object Oriented Language". However that was not the *first* code name for what eventually became C#; the first code name was "SafeC". – Eric Lippert Aug 17 '11 at 22:56

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 08 '11 at 20:26

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There's also Cristoph Wille's Introducing C#.

It's fairly light reading, and kind of nostalgic in the sense that the underlying platform was still called the Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS).

answered Aug 08 '11 at 20:26

Cecil Dishwasher

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 08 '11 at 14:40

The Wikipedia article is a good start.

C#'s principal designer and lead architect at Microsoft is Anders Hejlsberg, who was previously involved with the design of Turbo Pascal, Embarcadero Delphi (formerly CodeGear Delphi and Borland Delphi), and Visual J++. In interviews and technical papers he has stated that flaws[citation needed] in most major programming languages (e.g. C++, Java, Delphi, and Smalltalk) drove the fundamentals of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which, in turn, drove the design of the C# language itself.

If you do find a reference you could update the wikipedia article. ;p

Yeah, I know where the language came from—I'm now particularly interested **in the way Microsoft presented it when it came out**. I remember there have been a number of rants about C# being ripped off from Java so I'm curious how they first presented it to the public the first time. — Dan, Aug 08 '11 at 14:43

Where can I read the original C# introduction paper by Microsoft?

3 Answers3