.NET Fundamentals

Although we are only in the fourth chapter, we have gone through quite a long journey about various aspects of memory management. They were discussed in general to make a more theoretical introduction to this topic. References to .NET were rare, even though this is the subject of the book. It’s time to change that balance. From this chapter to the end of the book, .NET will accompany us constantly. In this chapter, we will look at it with a slightly broader perspective, you will learn some mechanisms behind it, and we will begin to delve into the topics related to how it manages memory. We strongly encourage you to take the time to read the previous three chapters before continuing reading this one. From now on, we will also assume some basic knowledge about assembly language for x86/x64 platforms as we are going to dig deeper and deeper into .NET. If you need some knowledge refresh, read, for example, an excellent book, Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming 3rd edition, by Daniel Kusswurm (Apress, 2023).