C# vs. C
It is pronounced C Sharp, but why is it written C# with the number sign? Why isn’t it written C
; with the real musical sharp sign?
C# is Microsoft’s widely known object-oriented programming language. The name is picked from C programming language and Microsoft’s standard programming language, C++ - C plus plus. The latter part (Sharp sign) is selected from the music world; in musical notation, Sharp (), means higher in pitch by a semitone. Sure you have noticed how the name “C++” actually depicts a higher level “C”. And I like the way “C” or “C#” does the same; a beautiful mixture of computer software and music building a name for the new born programming language!
Here is copied from Section 6, Acronyms and abbreviations of ECMA-334 (4th Edition) – C# Language Specification:
As you notice, it is stated that the official name of the language is C# by using number sign. The number sign (#) was selected by Microsoft to replace the musical sharp sign, and that's some outcome we’re all now familiar with.
The decision was made in the sake of the technical difficulties in displaying the musical sharp sign () which is not supported by all fonts, browsers, and applications; and also the fact that it is not easily accessible by keyboards. The surprising part is that Microsoft sometimes uses the original name (using musical sharp sign) in some ads and arts; just have a brief look at this shot from Microsoft Visual C# 2003 boxes:
Some Background
C# was publicly announced at the Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in 2000. The lead designer and architect of C# programming language is the famous Danish software engineer, Anders Hejlsberg, who joined Microsoft at 1996, and was very famous for his developments in Turbo Pascal and Delphi – Borland’s amazing development tools at the time. Microsoft offered Anders a bonus of $1,000,000 to join Microsoft. One year later, Borland lodged a complaint that Microsoft has hired some of Borland employees to take Borland’s secrets. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending at last, especially for developers like me who were passionate about both parties.
In August 2000, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel submitted the C# programming language to European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), and at the end of the day ECMA released ECMA-334 – C# Language Specification in December 2001. It was then passed to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2002, and so it became an ISO standard in 2003 – ISO/IEC 23270. Currently the best standard-compliant implementation of the standard C# is Microsoft C# Compiler, which is actually being employed by some IDE’s such as Microsoft Visual C# and Borland C# Builder.
; with the real musical sharp sign?C# is Microsoft’s widely known object-oriented programming language. The name is picked from C programming language and Microsoft’s standard programming language, C++ - C plus plus. The latter part (Sharp sign) is selected from the music world; in musical notation, Sharp (
), means higher in pitch by a semitone. Sure you have noticed how the name “C++” actually depicts a higher level “C”. And I like the way “C” or “C#” does the same; a beautiful mixture of computer software and music building a name for the new born programming language!Here is copied from Section 6, Acronyms and abbreviations of ECMA-334 (4th Edition) – C# Language Specification:
“The name C# is written as the LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C (U+0043) followed by the NUMBER SIGN #(U+0023)”
As you notice, it is stated that the official name of the language is C# by using number sign. The number sign (#) was selected by Microsoft to replace the musical sharp sign, and that's some outcome we’re all now familiar with.
The decision was made in the sake of the technical difficulties in displaying the musical sharp sign (
) which is not supported by all fonts, browsers, and applications; and also the fact that it is not easily accessible by keyboards. The surprising part is that Microsoft sometimes uses the original name (using musical sharp sign) in some ads and arts; just have a brief look at this shot from Microsoft Visual C# 2003 boxes:
Some Background
C# was publicly announced at the Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in 2000. The lead designer and architect of C# programming language is the famous Danish software engineer, Anders Hejlsberg, who joined Microsoft at 1996, and was very famous for his developments in Turbo Pascal and Delphi – Borland’s amazing development tools at the time. Microsoft offered Anders a bonus of $1,000,000 to join Microsoft. One year later, Borland lodged a complaint that Microsoft has hired some of Borland employees to take Borland’s secrets. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending at last, especially for developers like me who were passionate about both parties.
In August 2000, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel submitted the C# programming language to European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), and at the end of the day ECMA released ECMA-334 – C# Language Specification in December 2001. It was then passed to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2002, and so it became an ISO standard in 2003 – ISO/IEC 23270. Currently the best standard-compliant implementation of the standard C# is Microsoft C# Compiler, which is actually being employed by some IDE’s such as Microsoft Visual C# and Borland C# Builder.
posted by Jamal Mavadat at
11:01 PM
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