Thus, can someone please tell me (or give me a link to), what is the
minimum environment necessary to run a "hello world" VB.NET program?
Does it need anything more than the relevant program EXE? Maybe a
simple runtime engine like "normal" VB? Or does it need a big support
environment like Visual Studio?
Visual Studio is the preferred professional toolshed. It is not in any way
required to run .Net programs nor to develop them if you are happy with the
command line compilers and text editors of the bare bones .Net SDK.
[I shouldn't really say bare bones, because there are some incredibly handy
utilities in that SDK.... you could, if you were that way inclined, get up
to all kinds of mischief with it..... ]
:0
VB.Net is one of several languages that can be used to develop programs and
class libraries to run on the dotNet runtime. That is to run a Vb.net
program you will need the dotNet runtime, which is freely available for
royalty free distribution. This will be built into future operating system
delivered by Microsoft. The dotNet framework essentially wraps the inane
complexity and havoc of the Win32 API into something a little less mind
boggling and altogether more productive.
Asked slightly differently: what (if anything) would I have to install
on a plain vanilla win98 PC, to run a "hello world" VB.NET program?
One dotNet HelloWorld .exe, which in dotNet is often referred to as an
assembly. This assembly contains the manifest, which is the self describing
"header" of the .exe, containing version and dependancy info etc.
It also contains the MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Lanaguage instructions)
that constitute the working "guts" of the program. It is this MSIL that is
JIT compiled and run by the framework at runtime.
You will also need the runtime as mentioned above to run this program. So
all in all.. two things.
N.B You will often hear the terms "framework" used when "runtime" is meant.
Its probably more correct to think of the runtime as being exactly that, a
runtime engine. The framework is all the supporting goop such as base class
libraries etc that support and wrap the Win32 interop etc providing the
dotNet namespaces.
You cant run a dotnet program without the framework... but understand that
the framework is not the runtime engine. The framework includes but is not
limited to the runtime engine.
hth
Richard