>I believe that C# and VB.NET have the same capabilities to run unmanaged code. After all, its the CLR the is running the code, not the language. I believe that C# can only emit managed code. You have to use C++.NET to emit unmanaged code. But I could be wrong on this point. Do you have any references?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/dotnetconvers.asp

Q: Can you discuss any advantages C# would have over Visual Basic (VB) in terms of the framework?

Anders Hejlsberg: Regarding C# vs. Visual Basic, it really primarily comes down to what you already know and are comfortable with. It used to be that there was a large perf difference between VB and C++, but since C# and VB.NET use the same execution engine, you really should expect the same perf. C# may have a few more "power" features (such as unsafe code), and VB.NET may be skewed a bit more towards ease of use (e.g. late bound methods calls), but the differences are very small compared to what they were in the past.

And a page describing how to do it:

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/unsafe.asp