Microsoft intermediate language shares with Java byte code the idea that it is a low-level language with a simple syntax (based on numeric codes rather than text), which can be very quickly translated into native machine code. Having this well-defined universal syntax for code has significant advantages.
Platform independence
First, it means that the same file containing byte code instructions can be placed on any platform; at runtime the final stage of compilation can then be easily accomplished so that the code will run on that particular platform. In other words, by compiling to IL we obtain platform independence for .NET, in much the same way as compiling to Java byte code gives Java platform independence.
You should note that the platform independence of .NET is only theoretical at present because, at the time of writing, a complete implementation of .NET is only available for Windows. However, there is a partial implementation available (see for example the Mono project, an effort to create an open source implementation of .NET, at www.go-mono.com/).
Performance improvement
Although we previously made comparisons with Java, IL is actually a bit more ambitious than Java byte code. IL is always Just-In-Time compiled (known as JIT compilation), whereas Java byte code was often inter

Microsoft中間語言與Java字節(jié)代碼共享一種理念：它們都是一種低級語言，語法很簡單(使用數字代碼，而不是文本代碼)，可以非?？焖俚剞D換為內部機器碼。對于代碼來說，這種精心設計的通用語法，有很大的優(yōu)點。
1. 平臺無關性
首先，這意味著包含字節(jié)代碼指令的同一個文件可以放在任一個平臺中，運行時編譯過程的最后階段可以很容易完成，這樣代碼就可以運行在該特定的平臺上。也就是說編譯為中間語言就可以獲得.NET平臺無關性，這與編譯為Java字節(jié)代碼就會得到Java平臺無關性是一樣的。
注意.NET的平臺無關性目前只是一種可能，因為在編寫本書時，.NET只能用于Windows平臺，但人們正在積極準備，使它可以用于其他平臺(參見Mono項目，它用于創(chuàng)建.NET的開放源代碼的實現，參見http://www.go-mono.com/)。
2. 提高性能
實際上，IL比Java字節(jié)代碼的作用還要大。IL總是即時編譯的(稱為JIT編譯)，而Java字節(jié)代碼常常是解釋性的，Java的一個缺點是，在運行應用程序時，把Java字節(jié)代碼轉換為內部可執(zhí)行代碼的過程會導致性能的損失(但在最近，Java在某些平臺上能進行JIT編譯)。