When Microsoft settled a lawsuit from Sun Microsystems over changes to the Java programming language, they turned to veteran language designer Anders Hejlsberg to design a new object-oriented language backed by a powerful virtual machine. The result was C#—and a replacement for both Visual C++ and Visual Basic within the Microsoft ecosystem. Although comparisons to Java are still inevitable in syntax, implementation, and semantics, the language itself has evolved past its roots, absorbing features from functional languages such as Haskell and ML.