Microsoft .Net Micro Framework

To prove I have nothing against Microsoft per se, today I'll talk about something I was really glad to find: Microsoft .Net Micro Framework.


Although I often criticize lots of MS products and decisions, I won't deny there are lots of good things MS has accomplished over the years. Visual Studio and .Net framework being some of them; setting a standard for programming environments that all others are compared to.

Now, this .Net Micro framework edition allows us to take that easy and fast programming to much smaller devices:

The typical .NET Micro Framework device has a 32 bit processor with no external memory management unit (MMU) and could have as little as 64K of random-access memory (RAM).

Which suits devices like these:

Smallest Footprint	64KB RAM, 256KB Flash
Processor	ARM7 (with or without MMU) ARM Cortex M3 ARM9 ADI BlackFin
Real-time OS	.NET Micro Framework is not real-time, but can be hosted on a real-time OS as an option
Application development	Managed code using Visual Studio 2008 and C# Native C/C++ code interop capabilities
Tools	Visual Studio 2008 + .NET MF SDK: application development Visual Studio 2008 + .NET MF Porting Kit + native platform compiler: interop and custom BSPs
Support	10-year product support life cycle Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Partner resources / ecosystem

If you're working on embedded programming, you'll want to give it a look.