Common Type System

As there is a layer of abstraction between the language and the framework, it is evident that each of the language literals are mapped to specific CLR types. For instance, the integer of VB.NET is the same as the int of C#, as both of them point to the same type, System.Int32. It is always preferred to use language types since the compiler takes care of the mapping of types. The CTS system is built as a hierarchy of types with System.Object at its apex. The Common Type System (CTS) is divided into two kinds, one of which is value types, which are primitives that are derived from System.ValueTypes, while anything other than that is a reference type. The value types are treated differently to the reference types. This is because while allocation of memory value types are created on a thread stack during execution, reference types are always created on the heap.