Framework Overview(Chapter 5 of C# 4.0 in a nutshell)
Framework 4.0 adds the following new features:
• New core types: BigInteger (for arbitrarily large numbers), Complex (complex numbers), and tuples (Chapter 6)
• A new SortedSet collection (Chapter 7)
• Code contracts, for enabling methods to interact more reliably through mutual obligations and responsibilities (Chapter 13)
• Direct support for memory-mapped files (Chapter 14)
• Lazy file- and directory-I/O methods that return IEnumerable<T> instead of arrays (Chapter 14)
• The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is now part of the .NET Framework (Chapter 19)
• Security transparency, which makes it easier to secure libraries in partially trusted environments (Chapter 20)
• New threading constructs, including a more robust Monitor.Enter overload, Thread.Yield, new signaling classes (Barrier and CountdownEvent), and lazy
initialization primitives (Chapter 21)
• Parallel programming APIs for leveraging multicore processors, including Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), imperative data and task parallelism constructs, concurrent collections, and low-latency synchronization and spinning primitives (Chapter 22)
• Methods for application domain resource monitoring (Chapter 24)
Framework 4.0 also includes enhancements to ASP.NET, including the MVC framework and Dynamic Data, and enhancements to Entity Framework, WPF, WCF, and Workflow. In addition, it includes the new Managed Extensibility Framework library, to assist with runtime composition, discovery, and dependency injection.
