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Anders Hejlsberg Interviewed On C#
ghost. writes: "I'm sure it's been submitted already, but here's an O'Reilly interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Chief C# language architect for Microsoft (as well as the force behind Turbo Pascal and Delphi, in the past). While my interest in C# specifically is mild at best, I always seem to learn a lot when /. gets into a good discussion about programming and language design, and I'd enjoy reading everyone's insight based on what Hejlsberg had to say." It's a good read, too -- this interview brings to the fore some of the questions about openness that people raise about C#, and Hejlsberg has strong words about his new baby.
Chief Architect of Delphi and His Team Designed WFC
Good details on C# as described in The Register
M$: "We're #2!"
Here is a link to minutes from a recent ECMA T39 meeting where they discuss the submission of C# and CLI.
with humpy love,
with humpy love,
humpmonkey
... and I quote:
.NET base-class library."
"In C#, enums are not just integers. They're actually strongly typed value types that derive from System.Enum in the
Wow! Now, next time I accidentally set the colour of my car to "Tuesday", the compiler will throw a hissy-fit at me! Hooray for C-#!
Donny
That's great, but his examples are stupid. Cases in point:
"one of our key design goals was to make the C# language component-oriented, to add to the language itself all of the concepts that you need when you write components. Concepts such as properties, methods, events, attributes, and documentation are all first-class language constructs."
Sure. That's new.
"And C# is the first language to incorporate XML comment tags that can be used by the compiler to generate readable documentation directly from source code."
So what? Ever heard of JavaDoc? POD? Having to code your comments in XML isn't a revolutionary leap (forward, anyhow).
"One of the key differences between C# and these other languages, particularly Java, is that we tried to stay much closer to C++ in our design."
-snip-
"Another important concept is what I call "one-stop-shopping software." When you write code in C#, you write everything in one place. There is no need for header files, IDL files (Interface Definition Language), GUIDs and complicated interfaces."
What?? First, C++ is the master of header files and interfaces. To write a language eliminating these is a good thing, but it's moving away from C++ and towards more modern languages like Java, not vice-versa. And even so, how can you say you're creating a highly component-ized language and then write everything in one place? OO-Pascal?
The most annoying thing about this interview is Hejlsberg's stance that people should choose C# because "We're starting with a clean sheet of paper" building a language from scratch. This has been done several times, but too often the first thing that happens to that clean sheet of paper is that it gets marked up with the motives of the creating body, in this case, anti-Java, anti-interoperability Microsoft.
Don't forget this is the same company that spearheaded the standardization of CSS, yet still fails to support the standard correctly in their browsers.
I'd just as soon start using Dylan exclusively.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Just to clear things up about the above (out of context) quote. He isn't saying you can't write a macro virus in VBScript. He is saying you cannot obtain an unsafe pointer and crash the system.
This will probably be moderated down as (obvious -1), but people are already responding with posts about VBScript kiddies etc...
$ lynx -dump http://windows.oreilly.com/news/hejlsberg_0800.htm l | grep innovat | wc -l
8
$
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Just for clarification and perhaps there's little difference between the two, but the Microsoft business lemming Goodhew screwed up the Gosling quote and not Anders.