Technically, the runtime is the thing you need if you didnt use [native] AOT. A big example being that you don't need to emit/interpret IL in an AOT binary. I

Technically, the runtime is the thing you need if you didnt use [native] AOT. A big example being that you don't need to emit/interpret IL in an AOT binary. I agree though, the minimal .NET example is still not close to a full-featured .NET platform. I kind of like the idea of opting-out of features though. Bringing the whole runtime for the party each time is a bit overkill (unless its already on every target machine). Lots of code doesn't need reflection. Some special cases actively dislike GC, etc.