Working with Unmanaged Code

Abstract

When you write code in.NET, whether in NETCF or the desktop framework, you’re creating managed code. In NETCF, managed code is created by using either C# or Visual Basic.NET as your programming language. Managed code runs under the watchful eye of the.NET runtime and is guaranteed, by the runtime, to be safe. For one thing, being “safe” means that the code you write can’t and won’t write outside your application space. The intermediate language (IL) code generated by the managed compilers is verified at runtime to be sure that the code runs safely. On the desktop, a feature called Code Access Security (CAS) makes certain that the application will only run if it has the proper execution rights on the machine running the code. While NETCF doesn’t support CAS, the runtime still does verification of the code at runtime.