Yes they did, every programming language needs a runtime, unless we're taking about Assembly. C also has a tiny one, even though most folks don't think so. htt

Yes they did, every programming language needs a runtime, unless we're taking about Assembly. C also has a tiny one, even though most folks don't think so. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualst... One of the .NET design ideas was exactly to have a common runtime between VB6+, J++ and C++, using COM, but the lawsuit from Sun made them pivot to something else. https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net-generics-research-project-history-the-msr-white-paper-from-mid-1999/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd... This idea came back as WinRT, which they completly messed up, and for me it was how .NET 1.0 should have been in first place. https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt-everything-old-is-new-again/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt... Unfortunely that ship has sailed, given how bad UWP landed.