Benefits of CIL

At this point, you might be wondering exactly what is gained by compiling source code into CIL rather
than directly to a specific instruction set. One benefit is language integration. As you have already seen,
each .NET-aware compiler produces nearly identical CIL instructions. Therefore, all languages are able
to interact within a well-defined binary arena.Furthermore, given that CIL is platform-agnostic, the .NET Framework itself is platform-agnostic,
providing the same benefits Java developers have grown accustomed to (e.g., a single code base running
on numerous operating systems). In fact, there is an international standard for the C# language, and a
large subset of the .NET platform and implementations already exist for many non-Windows operating
systems (more details at the conclusion of this chapter). In contrast to Java, however, .NET allows you to
build applications using your language of choice.