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I just wanted to metnion to Niel and other readers that the article, although very good and useful, confuses the .NET runtime and the .NET Class Library.
The runtime is the Common Language Runtime (CLR). It is an executable hosting environment that supplies all of the basic services for .NET executables, such as garbage collection and memory management. Also, it is implemented based on the Common Language Specification (CLS) which, for example, defines primitive types.
The VAST library of classes against which .NET developers code is the .NET Framework Library or the .NET Class Library. It is an enormous and comprehensive framework coded by Microsoft _on top_ and against the CLR. The library includes the various namespaces such as System.Xml or System.Data, etc.
These namespaces are delivered as a set of dlls. I suppose, if one wanted to, one could bypass this functionality and code directly against the CLR, but then the developer would have a whole lot of coding to do. I assume this architecture is similar in the Java world where a developer mainly codes against the various packages delivered with a Java SDK, and not the Java VM itself.
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