Some key benefits of the .NET platform

The .NET platform were first introduced to the world in 2002 & were intended to offer a much more powerful, more flexible, and simpler programming model than COM.

Some key benefits of  .NET platform are:

Interoperability with existing code:

The existing COM binaries can commingle i.e. interop with newer .NET software and vice versa. As of .NET 4.0 onward, interoperability has been further simplified with the addition to the 'dynamic' keyword.

Support for numerous programming languages:

.NET applications can be created using any number of programming languages(C#, VB, F#, etc).

A common runtime engine shared by all .NET aware languages:

All .NET aware languages share common runtime engine i.e. CLR(Common Language Runtime).

Language Integration:

.NET supports cross-language inheritance, cross-language exception handling and cross-language debugging of code.

For eg:- you can define a base class in C#, and extend this type in VB.

A comprehensive base class library:

This library provides shelter from the complexities of low-level API calls and offer a consistent object model used by all .NET aware languages.

A simplified deployment model:

Unlike COM, .NET libraries are not registered into the system registry. The .NET platform allows multiple versions of the same .dll to exists in harmony on a single machine.