Perhaps one of the most important aspects of developing an application that uses the .NET Framework, is that it uses what is known as "Managed Code". Unfortunately, since many people automatically think of "Web Services" when they think of .NET, the apparent value of Managed Code is often misunderstood. Some programmers might even feel that since they aren't needing to do Web Services programming that there isn't anything in .NET that is useful to them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The .NET Framework in general, and Managed Code in specific, represent the future direction that Microsoft is heading in the programming model that will be used for developing all Windows applications. In "Longhorn", the codename for the next version of Windows, we will expose an entirely managed API for developing applications with, and this will be the primary method for developing applications for "Longhorn". You can find out much more about "Longhorn" by attending the upcoming Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on October 26-30th, but in the meantime I recommend that you watch this episode to check out the benefits of Managed Code as used within the .NET Framework.

Joining us in this episode will be Brad Abrams and Anders Hejlsberg to discuss the overall architectural issues involved with Managed Code, as well as Nick Hoddap and Chris Sells to show us some of the programming benefits that are gained by using Managed Code.