This chapter is a necessary distraction from your main purpose, which is to learn about the C++/CLI language. In this chapter, you’ll find some important information that is not specifically related to the language syntax, but to the platform, compiler, and development tools. There’s a great deal to the .NET Developer Platform (NDP); entire books have been written on the subject. This chapter can’t begin to cover everything in detail, so it’ll just touch upon some of the key concepts and give a few examples that will get you started.