Mercury Researchers Explain Microsoft .NET

Bob.Smart writes "Microsoft's .NET is clearly explained in this article on the Mercury web site. The input from various important research groups is also interesting."

Comments

Re:Other languages?

[Pinball Wizard]

methinks Microsoft is starting to change its tune. Almost everything I've read about them lately shows that they want to ditch the "evil monopolist" image they created for themselves. They apologized to the Linux/NTFS developers, for example. They are funding open source development companies like Corel. I am open minded enough to ditch my stereotypes about them if they continue to behave as citizens in the corporate world.

As far as other languages being supported, that's what .net is all about. It will work with Perl, Python, VB, C/C++/C#, Cobol, Eiffel, Mercury, etc. The only programming language I know about that doesn't have .net support is Java, but I don't see why support couldn't be built for it. I imagine MS will leave that to Sun and IBM to do themselves, however.

I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.

.net

[Pfhreakaz0id]

I saw a bunch of the .NET stuff at a recent conference. It's some cool stuff, and I was WAY impressed, especially on the ASP+ side, but as far as client apps, it's not a painless upgrade from vb6. Way different. This is in stark contrast with ASP+, which will run side-by-side with ASP pages (new file extension).

Most interesting thing is definitely the CLR (common languange runtime). It gives common data types, and a (beautiful) common object model for system stuff. Also, common performance (it's the same runtime). As he put it "Microsoft (this guy wasn't m$) "Your language is a lifestyle choice" also "Microsoft has been putting 80% of it's R&D budget into it. If you think you can write better c++ garbage colleciton, go ahead, but early tests show even VB.NET and c#.NET written against the CLR outperforms the vast majority of C++ code today." Not sure whether I believe all that :)

Also, you can do full inheritance, etc. AMONG THE DIFFERENT .net languages. Write a form in C#, inherit it in VB, modify it, inherit the interface back into C#. Not only that, but when you run in debug mode in the IDE, it seamlessly steps into and out of the bits of code.

An old VB head had an interesting point too. By abstracting the API into an object model, it really paves the way for platform independence. After all, he said, if wrote a CLR for the mac, for instance, it would be trival to port a program from any .NET language. Also linux, obviously.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.
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Here's The Thing

[MSwanson]

A couple things that I feel should at least be put out in the open:

1. .NET has been in development for over 3 years.

2. You can visit a sample .NET application at http://www.ibuyspy.com/ where it has been running without fail for approximately 6 months.

3. You can download the pre-beta SDK and develop in three languages *today*, and it all just works. I've played with it extensively.

4. The Common Language Runtime compiles only the functions that are called, and it uses an optimizing compiler to do it. When other functions are called, they are compiled just-in-time (saves a lot of system resources).

5. All languages are on equal footing. They all share the same GC and debugging features. You can spawn threads in VB just as easily as in C++.

6. You can inherit a VB class into C# into C++ and back into C++ if you want to.

7. Everything is strongly typed...no more figuring out what kind of string that function in C++ expects. Just call it natively. It just works.

8. The Common Language Infrastructure (which includes the CLR) is being submitted to ECMA (a standards body).

9. So is C#.

10. With Java, you have to learn Java. Plus, statistics show that 70% of all Java developers target APIs that are native to their platform. Thus, the "write once, run anywhere" promise never comes true except in the most simple of situations. With .NET, you can write in *any* of over 15 already-announced languages.

11. Although I could go on, I have to mention that it just kicks major ass.

If you actually want to speak intelligently about this, you really owe it to yourself to try it out. Or, you can complain that the ".NET" term doesn't make any sense, thus, because of that severe brain blockage, you can't actually talk about the technology and its merits, because you've never even given it a chance.

The sad thing is, you'll be talking it down, when in fact, it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in this industry. Linux or not.

Will it be stable?

[tbo]

The real question is, how stable will it be? Every software vendor out there is rushing to develop new architectures, technologies, etc., but they don't spend nearly enough time testing. True, garbage collection should improve stability, but that's only if garbage collection is implemented properly. People are likely to just jump on the .NET ship and hope that it will cure all their problems.

When will people realize that there is no silver bullet? More than all these fancy technologies and buzzwords, we need good software engineering and extensive testing. Customers share part of the blame for not shunning companies that produce crappy software. Capitalism only works if customers use their brains.

Here's a quick question for you: How many broken Java applets have you seen? How many have you seen that work perfectly? I almost never see Java applets that work perfectly (may be my JVM, but what good is the cross-platformness of Java if you can only get a working JVM for one platform?). In comparison to .NET, Java is a mature technology, yet it's still not very good. I'd rather see developers put their energy into making Java mature and bug-free, even if .NET is technically superior (not saying that it is).

This is my rant for the day. Yes, good architectures help, but good software engineering and thorough testing will always be most important. Too bad they aren't sexy enough to get the attention they deserve.