C#

C# was designed by Anders Hejlsberg at Microsoft, first distributed in 2000 as part of the .NET platform. Hejlsberg had previously designed Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and Visual J++ — and flaws he identified in major languages (C++, Java, Delphi, Smalltalk) drove the design of both the Common Language Runtime and C# itself.

The language is multi-paradigm: strongly typed, object-oriented, with increasingly strong functional features (LINQ, pattern matching, records, lambdas). It was standardized by ECMA in 2002 and ISO in 2003, and has evolved rapidly — C# 12 is a very different language from C# 1.0.

Originally Windows-only via .NET Framework, C# now runs cross-platform on .NET (formerly .NET Core). It’s used in web (ASP.NET), desktop (WPF, MAUI), games (Unity), cloud services, and more.