The history of C#

The history of C # (Sharpe) is extremely interesting. Behind what we now know as C # are two different languages - the name comes from an old Microsoft project that they have abandoned long time ago, and the contents of the language itself - from a completely different project developed at a later stage.

The appearance of the language and its name

During the development of the .NET Framework, class libraries were originally written using a compilation system called Simple Managed C (SMC). In January 1999, Anders Healsberg (former Borland Delphi architect attracted to Microsoft) formed a team to build a new programming language called "Cool," meaning "C-like Object Oriented Language." Originally, Microsoft thought of keeping the name "Cool" as the final name of the language, but eventually changed its decision after a possible copyright infringement occurred.

However, "Cool" language is far from being Microsoft's first development. Already in the eighties, the company used a modified version of C, which they called "C #". The development of this language has been discontinued and the project has never been completed. Microsoft retained the name of the language. Years later, after the "Cool" project turned out to need a new name, someone thought of the good old name "C #" and so "Cool" was renamed "C #". Formally, the .NET project was announced in July 2000 at the Professional Developers Conference, and the language was officially known as C #, and all ASP .NET and libraries were assigned to it.

Name meaning

The name "C #" has several meanings. The first is the C-language association, as C # combines features of the C programming languages, and most notably C++.

C++'s name emphasises that it "builds up" the C language, and in programming the method "++" means adding 1 to the current value. That's why Microsoft chooses the "#" symbol, since it represents 4 pluses, what they wanted to say is that "C #" builds up "C" language four times.

In addition, the "#" sign in the music is called "dièse" (from French) and serves to raise the height of a given tone by half a ton. It is a curious fact that the symbol "♯" does not appear as "#", but because of certain technical limitations, standard keyboards do not have this symbol, so it is acceptable to use the # symbol.