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Sun's (un)official response to .NET
siliconghetto writes "Sun decided that to post a response to .NET on it's Java home page. According to Madhu Siddalingaiah, "Microsoft is spinning [.Net] as innovative new platform but what they're really doing is giving developers an updated set of handcuffs."
"
What does the .NET `framework' promise that the JVM platform doesn't
deliver?
This article is far more interesting than the Sun article. Thanks for posting the link. Deserves a (+5, Interesting)
-no broken link
SOAP is a protocol that's been documented and whose existence is due to W3C and implemented by multiple vendors.
.NET - it's a VM owned and operated by Microsoft. Whose language of choice with same is C#, again, owned by Microsoft. Well, you can always use ASP+ with it, which is owned by, well, Microsoft. Etc.
I'm still researching it, but it seems that SOAP is, like HTTP, a protocol anyone can implement.
Now, let's look at
I wonder if and when Microsoft will hijack the SOAP protocol and have SOAP SCUM (SOAP - Supplied Completely Under Microsoft) which won't work with anything else, just like *ahem* J++ *ahem*
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
if MS truly wanted to prove their interest in cross-platform functionality, they would have ported COM to as many platforms as possible AND pushed it hard on all those platforms (I know it was ported to some Unix, but who exactly is using it?). Instead, they used it as a Windows fragmentation tool to bury IE deep into the OS to the point of inextractability. COM as a cross-platform standard could have been a very useful tool. It seems to be considerably more lightweight than CORBA (haven't looked too much at CORBA though), and it's extremely popular on the number one desktop OS. If Linux had COM support, they might not have had to duplicate its functionality with KDE parts (if that's what it's called). It would have also allowed Linux to mesh more seamlessly into Windows networks, maybe as an MTS/Apache host. Of course, that would have boosted Linux popularity, so strike that.
.NET are quite compelling. COM lacks some of the crucial elements of OO (such as inheritance), which .NET addresses in a language-independent way. The idea of taking an off-the-shelf binary component, extending it (in potentially another langue) and creating a new component from it is very appealing. But the compromises this all entails might be too much to swallow for many people for quite some time. I'm still not sure how I feel about it myself yet, I'll let some time go by and see how things work out--not that I have a choice anyway.
The ideas behind
Not true. CORBA has bindings right now for just about as many languages as .NET is planning to support, and these systems can all interoperate. In fact, Java's network and component specifications are going towards a more language neutral format with RMI over IIOP and the next generation CORBA specs and products that allow IIOP access to EJBs and deployment of EJB-like services in any language.
I know this is true because I write Java applications in a three tier system that use C++ components in the middle tier and PL/SQL code in the database tier. We also have Perl code that calls Java components in the middle tier.
There are also many languages that can be compiled into Java bytecode and use Java classes and services.
The real facts are that Java probably gives you more choices and makes it easier to use systems written in other languages and on other platforms than any other language. (C may be slightly more ubiquitous, but much more difficult)
Well.. you did it Moron.. You moderated me down without even reading what its all about. And do I care.. Well, I wish I knew who you were, possibly some kid who would love to believe Slashdot is all about Anti-M$ FUD, and who thinks by installing the latest patch for RHAT, with all the security holes, and thinks he is cool :). Anyway I have no bone to pick with you lad, you just served your purpose, that is to propogate FUD :).. Good job son :)
Rapid Nirvana
It's not vaporware -- plenty of developers have seen it being used at shows.
The depressing part is that enough people are stupid or short-sighted enough to jump on the .NET bandwagon that it and the C# abomination
will probably grow into a notable success,
further stifling the software development world.
AC
No, that's the replacement for MIPS.
>Between their idiotic branding
:)
> and versioning campaign (Java 2 > Standard Edition Version, um, 1.3)
And things like Windows 98 v4.10.2000 or Outlook 98 v8.blah.blah.blah.blah is any better?
Brielle
And on the latest Volano benchmarks, IBM JDK 1.3 BEATS TowerJ. Native code can't be beaten my ass.
/ Peter Schuller
--
peter.schuller@infidyne.com
http://www.scode.org
You get em Sun. Thanks for standing up for us little people against those huge oppressive corporations that use practices like forcing technology on us and make us sign gag orders. Hey wait a minute...
Crack |
Your post is the obligitory "Once again people are bashing Microsoft on Slashdot."
Honestly, what did you expect? This is a largely pro-Linux site, most Linux advocates are anti-Microsoft, and Bill Gates himself has mused that Linux is "Microsoft's largest competitor."
Slashdot is an opinion site and never claimed to not be biased.
Besides, perhaps you should click back in older news and see how many frequently an X-box story appears on Slashdot. It seems to me that every time a rumor comes out about the non-existent X-box product the story is immediately posted to Slashdot. Does that sound like Microsoft bashing to you?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Maybe Sun is just jealous because Microsoft is going to get .NET going before Jini gets anywhere (with it's 2? year advantage!)
-Kris
they've promoted: (1) lousy programming practices (2) hiring stupid people. Result: rapid money down the drain (RAD)
What you don't seem to realize is that C# is not the only language they expect to run on their 'common language runtime'. They are apparently happy to have other languages using it. MS has a fairly active research division, and has been pretty open to feature requests from language designers. As a result, the CLR will support things like true continuations, which aren't possible on a stock JVM. You see, Sun is pretty indifferent to languages other than Java running on the JVM.
Congratulations! You have managed to place something intellegent inside a wrapper that's sure to be labled "flamebait". You appear to like the MS platform. It works for you, and that's great. And it's true: if I were developing for purely the MS platform, I would choose pure MS tools.
HOWEVER, the center of the galaxy is not Redmond, and your experience is not everyone's experience. There are those of us, both in commerce and in government, that must develop for a range of platforms. For us, the phrase "Just Use .NET" is not an option. So what other "solution" does Mr. Bill and his cronies offer us? What solution do you offer us?
Writing applications that are platform independent is my cross to bear, and I don't like the "solution" from Microsoft.
Does M$ "have" to care about "us". Hell no! Not with 90+% of the desktop market sown up. They can do whatever the fsck they want! Do we object to M$ cramming their soultion down our throats? HELL YES.
I feel better now. thank you for you time and attention...
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
If Microsoft really are going this direction they are in a hell of a lot of trouble. It's like implementation (always hard for them) proved so frustrating that they're abandoning it entirely and going with nothing _but_ 'mindshare'. I will be interested to see how far they get. It'll make a good litmus test for who can think and who just recites propaganda, since there are NO ideas in .NET, apparently.
why research, when you can pander to the slashbot hivemind? looky here, it's the .NET framework SDK tech preview from AUGUST.
I don't know much about the .NET, but will the M$ (or whoever owns them) servers get the BSOD instead of me? After all, I'll just be running my apps from there, right? Right?
The interoperability promise, which I take to be the difference
between an operating system and a platform, is vaporware.
As others have said, you can have other languages compile to Java byte code, which will then run in the VM.
.NET platform, you have an option to compile to CLR and have that compiled later, or just have it precompile right then. Not to mention the ease with which you can insert bits of native code in .NET. So, it seems all to easy to wind up with libraries that have just a bit of native code in them - which will break them on other architecturs.
The problem you have with using CLR on any other language is the ease with which native code might end up in libraries. WIth the
But that's not even the real issue. The problem I have is that since the CLR is essentially a VM - why would I want to switch to that? VM's have spent the last couple of years improving at a tremeddous rate, and I have trouble imagining the Microsoft team (last I read, four people) can outmatch them anytime soon.
An VM's are here now, on a number of platforms. They have mature (and maturing!) API's for hooking in profilers and debuggers. It seems like you'd be crazy to pick what is essentially a beta VM that runs only under Windows to run production stuff on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They already have .COM, don't they??
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
the Microsoft Linux platform (in conjunction with RedHat) with certain, shall we say, closed-source additions. Like a new, closed-source kernel, a new, closed-source virtual machine, closed-source IP stack, you get the drift. Everything people LIKE about Linux, but better.
Score -1 Flamebait. Red Hat's OS is one of the few commerical Linux distributions that's entirely Open Source - you won't see SuSE or Caldera going down that path. They also viciously hate Microsoft [from Bob Young on down], see closed source as archaic [but tolerable for those that still aren't comfortable with OSS] and wouldn't dream of working with them.
The company which once said that they are "the dot in .com" might become "the dot in .net". Who knows ? Let's keep our fingers crossed & see what happens to Star Office.
..:: Molotov's cocktail is a Russian blowjob
You seem to have forgotten that .NET isn't native code... so the question becomes, will it run faster than the equivalent Java? And the answer is, probably not. IBM and Sun (and gcj) have an enourmous head start in developing JVMs, and Microsoft is not noted for its slim and speedy coding.
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
Tried Linux. After spending 3 days trying to get my unsupported video card to work under it, I gave up on it. Although I could get to a command line, I just refuse to go back to DOS days. We should all be past that by now.
Besides, you don't need Linux to show you how a computer works. Linux doesn't teach you anything other than the archaic, abbreviated commands in unix. Spend a few months trying to master assembly language, then you'll learn about how computers work
And don't anybody mod this down to flaimbait just because I don't love Linux!
Linux is inferior in many ways, but I'll admit it is also superior in many ways. It's a trade-off. What do you want more, stability and free software, or software you can use without having to buy several books so you can find out how to install it. I'm lazy. I want to pop a CD in a start doing whatever I bought the software for.
I'm sorry for stooping to this, but you really dont understand what you are talking about.
.
I used VB to create an app. I admit it. As a developer fairly new into industry back then, we as a team decided VB was the language of choice for some of the reasons you mentioned. The repercussions were terrible. Spagetti. Nuff said.
VB = Mountain of Hacks (tm) and thats being nice.
As for what they've done to C++, dont even go there.
~matt~
0
o
><>
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
There are many reasons for that. One is that for native Windows programs, the OS doesn't account for all the resources in the process size: shared libraries and other resources are not mentioned. Another is that supporting some of the functionality in Java requires more runtime support, like dynamic compilation and reflection. Those are very useful, but they aren't cheap. There are some parts of the Java libraries that ought to be optimized (more packed representations for images, for example), so if you are using a lot of images, your process might be larger than an equivalent Windows program. And memory management by the Java runtime may appears to use more memory than it actually does anyway.
If you want to, you can batch-compile Java just like you batch-compile C++ or .NET, and you get executables with similar size and similar behavior. But you also get similar limitations on dynamic loading and reflection as you would get in C++ and .NET.
Java process sizes already aren't a problem for most applications (in particular, server applications). In a few years, they'll seem miniscule, just like the humungous Windows executables from a few years ago are the lean and mean applications of today.
Get out of that "I know it all" mode and appreciate what they have accomplished to enrich the developer community worldwide dumbo.. If you dont like M$, go and watch Bill Gates and jack off. We dont want you here unless you have something meaningful to post.. If you just wanna rant, put your mouth in your mothers pussy and do that.
Rapid Nirvana
Maybe they already have.
Servlets/JSP/J2EE/JavaBeans... Must I go on?
...). Most of it is backed by major players (Sun, IBM, Oracle, etc.).
.NET a run for the money.
.NET is interesting : cross-platform, cross-language, etc.
.NET up-close soon. Beside, I want to see real-world deployment before I judge.
.NET might very well follow the same route...
Most of it runs *now* under your favorite OS (Linux, Windows,
The point is that Sun doesn't need to go on the offensive... it has already technology out there that can give
Sure, *theoritically*
But I don't know if you are like me... I want to see hard cold facts. I want to touch the code and make it go. Since I spend most of my time under Linux... I'm just not likely to see
Remember WindowsCE? Was supposed to be the **big** thing... the Palm killer... remember what happened? Oh! Well...
Java works *now* and it works well.
Sun Has Declared They will now be running their own system in response to .NET.
.ORG!!!
You can learn many thing about how operating systems work by reading the linux kernel source. You can learn many things about how networking and computer security by setting up linux networks. And I'm just gunna shutter at the "some kind of dos prompt" remark.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's not totally true though I appreciate the intent. There's no real reason why you can't have a compiler generate native code. You can have an object (say a COM object if you must) that has all the methods as native x86 code. Now you send this across to another machine and you want to run it as PPC code, just binary translate it. If your compiler anonotates the code entry points by either not using jump on register or using a standard switch format, you just removed half the problems with binary translation. If you know in advance which platforms you are going to need you can generate fat objects with multiple code formats. Your runtime can even sandbox the code by using code verification techniques or proof carrying code.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I remember when I went to the "training seminar" [a misnomer, it was a marketing pitch] for
Visual InterDev 1.0 in Pittsburgh, the Microsoft speaker swore up and down that activex, MTS, and ASP support was "just around the corner" for solaris, linux and macintosh....
http://www.chilisoft.com/
Try that out.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Amen!! .NET on other platforms will be comparable to asp on linux. It 'works', but leaves much to be desired without all the objects on windows. (not that asp WITH those objects is all that great)
Yes, the freedom to bind youself to one platform. My statement stands irony free.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've looked into it. The core of its existance is not Cross-platform, but Cross-Language (which you yourself even said in your post!)
How can you have any system mean to be cross-paltform (the CLR layer) when the primary language for it (C#) encourages native code fragments!! And as a bonus the compilers also let the people writing code compile directly to native code instead of going to CLR code.
Today, it is easy to have services running on ANY server (not just Win2K) that talk to mainframes and UNIX servers, using Java. Perhaps the use CORBA, or RMI, or sockets, or even just URL scraping. It doesn't matter - Java does not have to be the only language you use.
If you don't think of CORBA and RMI (over iiop) as generic communication solutions, then I don't know what to say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fine. So you can tie yourself to COM and the Windows API in a variety of languages. This is a good thing? .NET's VM may be ported to other platforms, but the APIs certainly will not -- though I'm sure game developers would like it if a supported version of DirectX suddenly cropped on Linux.
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
Actually, more of an inside joke. The "Red Hat == Microsoft" rant has occurred more than once in this forum. If I'd REALLY wanted to troll or flamebait, I'd have said Debian.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
youre missing the point. .NET is basically an ASP strategy. what it delivers is fairly *brilliant* if i may say so. this is the first time that M$ has found a way to *own your data* having complete control over your finances, work habits, surfing habits, friends, *everything*..includnig the machine you paid for. .NET will run on M$'s servers - nothing else. the rest of the planet will be thin clients connecting to huge ASP servers. it has nothing to do with Java - thats just a model for the core language for .NET
Sun has an ad campaign of "We are the DOT in DOT COM".
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
And I personally disagree with the whole concept of trolling. A dissenting opinion is not a troll.
Respond to s
:-)
-- Mike Greaves
Actually, my comment has been marked as 'Insightful' twice, not flamebait and if you read the replies and my replies to those, you'll see that the rest of us were having an intelligent conversation.
All I get from your post is "you like MS platform, I don't". Good for you. Don't use it. Nothing is being crammed anywhere.
I write for other platforms too and I happen to find writing for MS a lot easier than the others. If the others were as easy then perhaps they would be as successful.
Welcome to my qualified opinion. Please take it as such in the future.
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
I might have to mount that quote on my wall.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've never really been a java fan, but if you get the chance, you should really check out the most recent version of the jre (1.3). It runs about 3x faster than any previous version.
Cool.
Yes.
Does it run on Mac? No?
No - no Mac version at the moment. It will be along presently.
Supported in major browsers? No?
Supported by Netscape 6 and Mozilla M18+ - runs nicely on both Windows NT and Linux.
I think I'll stay "cross-platform" and stick with 1.1.7.
I'll concur on the need for Java 2 RE to spread to more platforms - I assume there is a Sparc version in there somewhere, and MacOS will be there soon I believe. Not too shabby.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
> It's not vaporware -- plenty of developers have
> seen it being used at shows.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
Chris Mattern
They may, or may not (they are not bound one way or another.) However if they do -- I am sure it will somehow use Wine....Hell -- if they decided to port helloworld it would be something like this:
#!/bin/sh
exec wine helloworld.exe
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I'm a beta tester, and I can tell you that VisualStudio.NET is going to bring some great things to application development. I would challenge all those who are gung-ho against .NET to actually signup for the beta and test it out for yourself before passing judgements.
.NET:
It is expected that Microsoft will make BETA1 available to anyone who wants it (minus a small SH fee). You can check this page for more info on
http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/
I just find it amusing that so many people (including the author of the article, with whom I am corresponding via email) jump to conclusions, without having read the documents or at least beta tested the software for more than 10 minutes.
My judgements on Linux are certainly based on more than a few hours/days/months of work, and I think anyone who wishes to be fair owes the same to ALL platforms and solutions.
-----
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Very glad to hear of a Haskell binding for .NET - perhaps this is what functional programming luminary Simon Peyton-Jones has been doing for Microsoft Research recently? Excellent news.
.NET seems fairly hyped, but it's be a shame to lose something of possible quality and utility in the sea of marketing hyperbole.
The article's slanted in favour of Java, but that's Slashdot for you. To me,
Don't really get along with Java myself, but that's mainly because I got used to C++ before it came along - if I was starting again, Java might be a better choice, for the cleaner syntax if nothing else!
arnald
Smalltalk much more closely resembles LISP from a standpoint of philosophy.
Python has pretty crappy lambda support, and I wouldn't call it anywhere near the quality of LISP's lambda. I do like Python, but it certainly isn't LISP with a traditional syntax.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I'm sorry VB didn't work out for you. I'm not sure what you mean by "Mountain of Hacks". What do you do now and WHY is it better? I've had a lot of success with VB and don't see any explanations of your flames against it. Convince me.
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
Seriously though, the one thing that Microsoft have always seemed dedicated to, though not perfectly so, is legacy-support. They sacrifice technical excellence/security for legacy support, something many people are not willing to do, much less even think about. Microsoft does SOME forward thinking and always want to be sure that they can support legacy stuff. This is one of the reasons they have such dominance - if you came out with new versions of OSes that breaks legacy support, where would you be? Microsoft understands their market only all too well.
Remember Win16? Win32s? I'm sure there would be some problems transitioning to Win64, but I'm sure it would work out, it's just a matter of relevance of PC platforms from here on.
And I've always found Java, (worse) C and C++ *way* to constrictive. Who cares? Use what you like.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Microsoft!Yet I'll tell my boss this, he likes things with exclaimations.
It is atleast 1000 times better than a blank "Segmentation Fault"
Here's what kills me about this whole .NET thingy. There are people that have litterally bought into it hook line and sinker. You can be talking about a project that you are currently working on and some 'IT Specialist' will walk up to you and ask why you aren't using the new and great .NET platform to develop it. What?!? Are they all really that fricken stupid?
.NET. Um, do they even realize that niether of these two things are 'real' yet? Not even hard-core, full-blown Microsoft lackeys can use these two things yet, why the hell should a Unix admin/developer start worrying about them?
.NET is actually up and running, AND someone shows me how superior it really is to everything that has ever been (and as MS has implied, is superior to everything that ever will be), then I might consider it. But I'm not putting my development on hold until I can purchase the development tools for something that may take up to five years to actually see the light of day. Sorry, life goes on. Things still need to be done today. I just don't have enough time to wait out the vaporware stage of these products. Especially considering that they won't probably work with my desired systems (let's be serious, MS making something cross-platform? Yeah, that'll happen).
Sorry to sound flamebaitish, but it is a sign to me that our industry has far too many wankers that don't have a damn clue what they are doing that things like this happen. MS has announced a vaporware platform and the IT industry starts proclaiming how great it's going to be and how wonderful it will be to finally have all of the world's problems solved. And people are buying it wholesale. I just can't understand it.
Don't people realize that you can't just stop everything you are doing today because MS might, maybe, at some arbitrary point in the future, release a new and improved something or other that may or may not make software development easier/better/cheaper/faster. There are people that seem to really believe that is what we should do. Never mind that I do all of my software development on Unix and Unix clones, I should just stop, right now, because I'm wasting effort unless I am using C# and
I'm sorry, but until I see proof that C# and or
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Next time, on Geraldo...
Madhu points out...
.NET is pushing for a runtime that is primarily language independant, and secondly platform indepenant (if you can swallow that). I think we can assume .NET is not another Java, but it has potential to be cross-platform.
"...it appears that the promised CLR (Common Language Runtime) aims to meet many of the goals that the proven Java virtual machine has already delivered. "
Expecting a company to post a clear and unbiased analysis of a competing technology is like expecting Hitler allowing Jews to publicly voice thier opinion of concentration camps.
Essentially,
Sure, a CLR is not a new idea, and I'm sure it's a pretty old idea dreamed up by many ripe developers in thier day, but it's a big task to undertake especially for supporting as many languages as MS is... As long as we're critisizing CLR's, where's SUN'S CLR!?!?!
I'm sure there are a lot of COBOL, and Haskell, Oberon, Pascal, etc. programmers who want to take advantage of Java's VM. Maybe Sun should get a clue, and understand that many people find Java to be a difficult learning curve. I'm sure many COBOL shops would be very happy...
My personal impression is that the ease of use and the power that a developer can wield is much greater with .NET; one of the reasons that create this impression is the price/performance and ramp-up-time difference.
Microsoft has the so called Universal MSDN Developer License program. I pay $2400 a year, and I get all of the SDKs, all of the Operating system and all of the Servers. I install SQL server, Exchange Server, IIS and .NET on my development machines, and after the two days it takes to do so properly, I can hack together an extensible database driven Workflow system with full email integration, stores for office documents, web views, issue tracking reports etc, etc in under a week.
Maybe I am mentally challenged, but installing Oracle and the proper version of the JDK under linux and shelling out big bugs for a performant Java development environment took me longer and actually buying the tools in question would cost significantly more. After all that pain, the ease of use still falls far behind.
This aside, one barrier that Java will always have is that interesting technologies (voice/face recognition etc.) need to be implemented on the client side - java is not nearly performant enough to shine here.
These technologies, however, do exist as free MS SDKs on the windows platform. This availability of easy-to-integrate power tools is imho the killing argument for .net and counter java; not to mention that in a corporate network standardizing on one hardware and os platform makes great business sense, so that the win that platform independence grants is irrelevant.
Just my $0.02...
If MS goes down the .NET path, will we ever see a standard-compliant VC++?
Certainly the most time lost in programming is debugging. (well, maybe not by the programmers of certain software companies who seem to do no debugging at all...) And debugging *demands* a console. What is simpler, 'printf("got to xyz, variable xpto has value %d\n", xpto)', or setting breakpoints, opening variable display windows, scrolling to the variable you want, etc, in a debugger? I seldom use debuggers at all, the printf way is so much better.
My condolenses. Y ou're probably used to crappy C++ debuggers, and simply are ignorant of anything better.
No, debugging doesn't require a console. I don't doubt that gdb and other very primitive debuggers do. (I've only used gdb in the C world) In Smalltalk, even Squeak, with a relatively primitive debugger (at least compared to IBM's VisualAge Smalltalk) it light years ahead of the trash you C++ coders have to deal with.
Oh well, i suppose it comes with the job.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I read the first line and stopped.
.NET".
.NET is the name for the new programming model for Windows, and every server product is bound to be made from .NET architecture sooner or later.
.NET applications, and even inherit and extend objects from different languages.
.NET is going to be great, and Sun know it.
"Microsoft has unveiled their latest web strategy called
.NET is NOT just a "web strategy". The web components are simply one part of the whole concept and I think it's about time people stopped and actually read about the whole thing.
.NET will be the future of development on the Windows platform, not just Microsoft-based web solutions.
I don't understand how it can be seen as handcuffs when you have over 20 languages that you can use to write
There will be no more type libraries, no more registry dependency, and you can deploy entire applications just by copying them.
I think
Gah! Let's not fight inaccuracies with inaccuracies. That way madness lies.
You haven't contradicted the quoted statement. In fact, it seems that you agree with it. If using COM and the Windows API isn't being tied to Windows, I don't know what is.
This is cool. Many of these languages can be targetted to the JVM (see Languages for the Java VM), which is also cool. Language diversity is cool.I'm not sure where you get this idea. Certainly, if you want to use the full-on J2EE platform then you need to use Java, just like you need to use .NET if you want to use .NET. But nobody said that you need to program to J2EE to write a client-server application. You can use CORBA in Java. You can use SOAP if you really want to.
Want Java applets that talk to CORBA services written in Haskell that talk to an RDBMS? You can have that. Want Perl CGI scripts that use SOAP to talk to a JAVA middle tier application? You can have that, too.
It looks like .NET is promising this as well, which is all well and groovy, but just because Sun published someone's opinion that you don't agree with is no reason to try to spread misinformation.
I agree, BTW, that the article is heavily slanted in favour of Java, but what did you expect?
Regards,
Toby Allsopp.
I think we're seeing pretty much eye-to-eye on the general merits of the two languages. I use VB a fair amount when I'm just trying to get something done quickly and I know it doesn't need to run anywhere but on Windows. VB is a great tool for that. I was mainly taking issue with comparing VB to Java because I felt the comparison wasn't fair. They are really two different languages used for at least two different reasons. VB is great for rapid Windows development. Java is great for writing portable software (and happens to be pretty decent for rapid development, though not quite as easy as VB). I think they both do well at what they are designed for.
but Sun the corporation swung from their goal of creating something that would help people to something that would hurt Microsoft.
I don't think I know what you're talking about here.
Sun isn't concerned with whether or not their stuff will actually be useful. They're more concerned with bashing Microsoft.
I don't see it. The way I saw things happening, Microsoft took the initiative in trying to spoil Java. Sun WAS trying to create something useful, and Microsoft was trying to undermine that creation so that it would not undermine their monopoly power. If Sun doesn't protect its creation from that sort of interference, then it could very well end up as another footnote in computing history and nothing more. Microsoft is an extremely powerful competitor with little in the way of scruples to stop it from doing whatever it takes to eliminate what it sees as a threat. I don't think the Linux comparison fits either. Apples and oranges.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
How did so many /.ers forget? The intention of .NET is to be a runtime environment to run on all platforms, not just on Windows. What, did you all lose your critical thinking facilites just because of some marketing BS from Sun?
The ultimate goal of .NET is pretty close to the holy grail of programming IMO - be able to write a program in any language that will run on any platform that has the .NET runtime. Mix and match languages if its appropriate and still run on any platform.
My analysis? The linked story is FUD and Sun is scared. Ignore .NET if you want, but also be prepared to cut yourself off from a lot of business that will be focused on it.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I love Java, but [the quote "but it is yet another proprietary Microsoft platform which will tie the developer to Windows"] is simply bullshit. The main purpose of .NET is the exact opposite. It's purpose is to allow developers to actually use COM and the Windows API without being shackled to VB and Visual C++.
.NET has been billed would make you think it'll be easy to access from most any langauge. .NET's idea of using XML to talk to the servers to pass method calls to and to access object models on the fly sounds pretty neat. Really, how hard is it going to be to reverse engineer, much less interface with using mature APIs, well-done XML? Past that, you're just sending back and forth 0101010101s.
.NET should be a great system that will provide cross-platform access to servers running MS tools (certainly eliminates a lot of the software piracy issues for MS), I wouldn't be surprised if Bill and Co. shut the cross platform door just as soon as you've taken a bite and realized how juicy and succulent the .NET platform's apple can be. And there's nothing to stop MS from making the relationship of .NET to, say, CORBA (or even just TCP/IP and sockets), that of a MS Word doc to a text file. Or JScript to Javascript. Or the Internet Explorer DOM to the W3C standard. Or CodeWarrior to VJ++. Or...
Well now, I wish I could believe that. Certainly the way
What worries me is Microsoft's track record. They take a standard, argueably add functionality in a Microsoft-brand superset of the standard, and then get programmers addicted to the easier development cycle of selling out to Bill's new tools at the expense of having crossplatform code (which, it should be noted, is not always a bad thing). Look not only at Java, but JScript, DHTML, CSS, and a whole host of web-specific technologies (not that Netscape is ethically clean -- remember the "layer" tag?).
So though
"This may be the fault of the interpreter, in which case HE is the hippopotamus." Boris Yeltsin, 60 Minutes
"This may be the fault of the interpreter, in which case HE is the hippopotamus."
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
If you didn't notice, .NET appears to use an intermediate language in a similar way to P-code. So it's not native either.
D
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I was just remembering a post that said IE5 on Solaris had practically the whole of Win95 in it.
What if the ports for C#/CLR came with huge chunks of Win2k to provide the api's? .NET would then be protable, bloated but protable.
Just a thought.
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
This is a Sun marketing document meant to spread FUD about dot-NET. Nothing more. Do you think they would point out any glaring benefits to dot-NET? Do you think they would point out where dot-NET is better than Java? Hell no. They are covering their ass just like Microsoft did when Sun came out with a language and framework.
And you know what? That's okay. As consumers of media, we all need to be able to separate the business-driven hype from the objective news. This is very important when we reference the web site of a company with vested interests.
A speech...
First someone mods up Bob Abooey as Informative, now someone modes up the Signal 11 account as Funny?
Pardon me, can anyone give me a hand tying this rope around my neck? I've just lost the last little bit of faith I had left in humanity.
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Next time, on Geraldo...
Regarding the original post -
.net environment available to Linux. That's not a Windows machine.
For someone who got a "5", he sure didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
Corel is making the
Dont Flame Me...
:)
Yeah Right..
Yeah right.. [2]
if you dont know what you are talking about then SHUT UP..
Where does this guy live ? Antartica ?
Tsk..tsk.. This guy just dont realise..does he...
SUN sponsors this guy's Chopper Trips
And exactly why shouldn't you be flamed?
The most useful, and actually fairly revolutionary benefit of .Net in my view is the cross language compatibility. Objects can communicate and inherit from each other without marshalling.
.net standard is pretty simple for any os, or any compiler. Having some standard for an os is generally useful as well, and if the .net format is well thought out, then adopting it gives crossplatform marshall free data.
.net solution is much better than com or corba performance wise.
Implementing the object and data format into
Then again COM seems pretty easy to port as well, so its puzzling why it wasn't. Other than maybe "just let everybody use c++ with source code" attitude.
2 big benefits I see. Cross language development. GUI in procedural OO, and processing in functional languages, and faster distributed computing (cross language here too).
The
Actually, the Mac OS X Beta comes with a 1.3 VM with the HotSpot JIT. I believe the class library is still 1.2.2, but that should be updated in the next release.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Good point.
If you used JVM-level classes, then yes, you could.
You'd be limited by the OO conventions of Java (which are handled at the JVM level), namely single inheritance (though you could probably get around that at the compiler level using interfaces).
100ms per function call, eh? nice troll.
I guess the sad thing (for you, that is) is that Java is actually improving.. You, know, getting faster, more powerful and stuff, instead of just spewing hot air (though their marketing department does a bit of that too).
JDK 1.3 was a major win in performance and reliability. JDK 1.4 is targetted at the same goals.
-Stu
- G047h4X0r
Right, and then they won't be able to get the stability they are shooting for. Once again, one single unified structure will collapse at the hand of unreliable ISVs.
.NET like they do with Windows now. Are their developers hands going to be tied and limited to a tightly knitted framework, or are they just going to be given a ticket to do whatever they want in the system and across any memory boundries?
.NET is tying the hands of the wrong developers. While there are applications that are poorly written and cause problems, it's usually the stuff that's allowed to be installed at the OS level that causes the problems. These include services, drivers, shell hooks, etc. Restrict those programs and 2/3 of the problems are solved.
It's going to turn into everybody trying to contribute their own little piece of code, and then it's no better than the current Windows OS. Most of the BSODs come from poorly implemented drivers and an unstable kernel.
While they may fix the kernel, there will still be the problem with the drivers. Look at ATI, HP or almost any 56k winmodem driver. They ALWAYS cause problems when first released. Whose to say these same companies won't screw up integral parts of
Most of what they are doing with
Just read the article (has some very interesting insights) and though it doesn't really draw any conclusions, it demonstrates very well why .Net's not going to work.
To quote form the article:
This is the exact problem. It's not thatThe reason they won't is that they can't see that the technology has to lead the business, not the other way around.
Gates was apparently underwhelmed with the entire .Net concept until
In other words, in MS's view,Now, before someone goes pointing out all the times bad technology has won because of canny business sense, think for a moment. This is a brand new arena, and a space where there's a lot of other monkeys just waiting for their chance to be top gorilla (if I can mix my primates for a moment). This is one time that the needs of the user will far outweigh marketing hype. Maybe not immediately, in the next year, two years. But ultimately.
Unless MS can understand that they need to first listen to the needs of the user, they're going to fail. Spectacularly.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
The problem I see with Python is that it's an interpreted language so if I want to sell a binary closed source app, I can't use it. Although I have to admit I'm not very familiar with it so if it can be compiled, then please clue me in...
Sounds like you've never programmed for rapid development or on a budget before. VB is plenty powerful for what most people need and takes a third the time to code in my experience. As someone who started out gung-ho C++ and who writes at least ten lines of Java a day, I feel pretty safe saying that VB is one of the best things that could have come along for businesses that want an application up quickly that performs acceptably.
Maybe you should learn to program in Perl; I find it takes me about a tenth (or less) as much time as C or C++, not merely a third. (No, I'm not exaggerating; if anything, I'm understating.) It's also highly cross-platform, including a GUI (Perl/Tk) that works identically under Linux, Unix and Windows...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Wake up, mister Buhrupgupta. Any Java program is already spat upon, since being programmed in Java results in a lag of at least 100ms per function call. Javalag(TM) is so notorious that sometimes entire websites are avoided simply because of shoddy scripting or too many frivolous applets that take so long to load. And that annoying IBM SurePay POS (Point of Sale, or Piece of S#!&, take your pick) system that CompUSA uses? That POS program runs entirely on Java. It lags like hell, causes the printer to stutter, and gives the keyboard a keystroke acceptance rate similar to that of the PCJr.
It's funny how the Sun programmers are complaining of Microsoft building another set of shackles when Java has programmers shelling out hundreds of dollars to put themselves in irons.
Java is to the programming world as trolls are to Slashdot. And I'm not biting when the time comes for me to choose an API.
DISCLAIMER: Javalag(TM) is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., LLC, CRAP, ETC.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Well, I guess dotnet will be the dot in dotcom. Sun will c sharp and be flat. How long until .net technology is first required class at major universities? We were forced to learn VB 5.0 to get past the first class At IUPUI. The next class was C programming (taught with visual studio C++). Everyone has sold there soul to MS. The Active directory is eaten everything up a lot more than Kpacman.
The last means of accessing COM objects from Java I worked was the Visual J++ COM "compiler," which put references to all the Windows-native calls into comment blocks in your Java source, and added the low-level code at compile time. Not exactly pleasant to debug, and completely non-portable.
However, Java on the server makes sense, and works consistently. I write J2EE apps for a living, and I can tell you with confidence that code that I write that relies on nothing but pure Java will run reliably on Solaris, Windows, and Linux at minimum, UNIX, and if I play it safe with my choice of runtime libraries (not core language or logic, just convenience classes), on MacOS, BSD, AIX, Tru64, HP/UX, OS/390, and a few others that I'm forgetting at the moment.
Don't get me wrong -- Perl is great. The minute you start taking advantage of your 'closer access to the OS', though, you restrict yourself to a small subset of the possible environments it runs on (POSIX is not universal).
Microsoft of course being totally innocent of any crime. I know Scott McNealy did this totally to boost his own company, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft didn't break the law. Or should police not use informants in case they might have their own reasons for turning criminals in?
We could place bets over the internet. I wonder how they would make the odds work though; everybody betting on Gates would have their computer crash while betting.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
JSP/ASP (with or without version numbers, plus signs, etc.) are:
The fact that Corel has signed an agreement with Microsoft to be port the .NET framework if Microsoft requests it does not impress me. Microsoft could do the exact same thing, if they liked -- they have more programmers than most anyone, and Linux is not so complex that a decent development and runtime environment couldn't be hacked together in a matter of a few months.
Lastly, Java is not interpreted! The first-generation JVMs treated the bytecode like an interpreted language, but the more recent high-performance JIT environments (as well as native compilers, like gcj) remove that bottleneck, while still allowing for compatibility on systems that don't have (or want) native compilation.
The goal of .NET is to perpetuate the lock-in that they've had on RAD tools (and the projects created with them) by preventing the mass exodus away from VB and VC++ that would otherwise be inevitable in the next few years. Yes, distributed objects, transactions, and inheritance will be available to users of those coding in a number of different languages, but that's simply the effects of using XML as a universal exchange protocol, not some mystic MS voodoo.
Of course, it makes good business sense, and if there's anything MS doesn't consistently screw up, it's business. PHBs will eat this shit up, and I forsee a long, dark winter for would-be liberators trying to urge their employers away from MS-specific development environments, langauges, and tools.
In your last paragraph, if you exchange Sun with Microsoft the paragraph still holds true.
This debate really isn't so cut and dried.
Microsoft seems to (lately) be rather keen on handing out the handcuffs.
Maybe it's time to bring out the fisticuffs and see how well they fight back?
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And what is this 'hundreds of dollars' that programmers are paying to use Java? I have written several commercial Java applications, and even more non-commercial ones, and never once encountered a requirement that I pay a licensing fee for a basic Java runtime environment or libraries.
My only hope is that your second-to-last paragraph indicates a sense of irony, and that your entire posting was intended to be taken a a single large sarcastic wisecrack.
There are lots of things in .NET to make it easier to run multiple languages. I'm talking about things in the type system (by-ref parameters), things in the instruction set (e.g. tailcall),
things in the documentation/standards (e.g.
common language specification -- a subset of the
full type system you should use for maximum interoperability), tool support, etc, etc.
JVM is multi-language despite Sun. .NET is
multi-language because of Microsoft. There is
quite a difference there. Don't get me wrong,
I would love it if Sun did an about face and
make JVM 2 or 3 suitable for more than just
Java, but so far their track record has been 100% Java.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
.NET is more than a bunch of new scripts and programming languages...
.NET based on the technicalities of programming syntax is completely missing the point.
.NET is Microsoft's way of creating systems for the net. It comprises development tools, operating systems and hardware. Look at MS Datacentre and the list of companies who have signed on to use it... It's basically every hardware manufacturer except Sun... MS DataCentre is the biggest threat to unix based soltions yet. Providing OS systems for exotic (compared to PC's) mainframe type machines.
It's all tied into providing low cost PC based alternatives to the existing expensive internet development solutions e.g ORACLE, SUN etc...
It'll all come down to price and MS has a proven track record of being able to supplying functionally comparable systems to their competitors at a bargain basement price. If you look at the cost of implementing a Sun Solaris system using Oracle and compair that the latest series of MS products you'll find MS benchmark better and are half the price.
How useful a system and how easy it is to develop on in the long run is dependent on the number of people who develop on it. People provide power... not machines or languages. It's all about widely deployed a system is... Microsoft understands this well... Sun on the other hand who make you wait weeks and months for systems do not. Any arguements about which will prevail Java or
Hmmm, When you say... I love Java, but this is simply bullshit. The main purpose of .NET is the exact opposite. It's purpose is to allow developers to actually use COM and the Windows API without being shackled to VB and Visual C++. ...it lets me know you haven't actually looked at .NET and are totally unaware of the position of COM within .NET
COM exists in .NET only as a legacy architecture to support. .NET classes aren't COM objects.
it's .net as in the net that people are caught in if they use it, correct?
"Your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on this page...."
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Do you think Compaq will be next with .COM?
dude, where is this slow adaptation again? maybe on the client side...
Plus it's documented, it exists and is used already.
I know, I know, some of you will argue on some ORB's slowness, etc. But do you really think things like marshalling can / will be avoided in .NET servers ? If so, it means they
will optimize it for Intel's data alignment
and the like, and that other architectures
will get a performance drawback in converting
data, I suppose.
Oh well, what's new here, actually ?
If you spent some time learning how to use those "archaic, abbreviated commands" you might find yourself more productive than you'd ever be in a GUI. X is nice, but aside from web browsing most Linux users I know do most of their work in xterms or the equivalent. Don't give up on the first try; if you're lucky enough to find someone to help you get set up, you can enjoy the Windows features you're missing and still learn to use the real power of the CLI on the side.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
I understand where you're coming from, but I have to disagree from my experience in the industry. I think that people miss the primary reason for creating high-level languages. It's to make it easier and faster to write useful code. You just can't beat VB for this.
.NET discussion, I think this is really a simple proof of what I just said. Sun isn't concerned with whether or not their stuff will actually be useful. They're more concerned with bashing Microsoft. I much prefer the route Linux has taken. For the most part it has taken care of it's own business and grown to fill a niche that has since expanded and expanded because it has become a solid product. I think Sun should learn a lesson from this and concentrate on what they're doing instead of trying to counter Microsoft all the time. Ultimately, that's a losing strategy. They're letting MS run the game and putting themselves in the catch-up role.
I'm not saying that interpreted Java isn't the right solution for SOME problems. Like I said, I use it rather frequently for things that really need to actually run on several platforms. Where I'm taking issue with your statement is really with your last comment in your reply. If you write something that works on the Microsoft/x86 platform, you've already reached the great majority of the places it's going to be used. And it's easier. You've gotten the most bang for the buck available in all the programming world. For each platform you want to support, it takes longer and consequently costs more money. Sometimes that's okay, sometimes trying to please everyone makes the project overly ambitious. Lots of times you really only DO need to support Windows users to be the most successful.
I think Microsoft's approach has been far from perfect, but is in many ways the best game in town. They wanted to hit the largest portion of the population they could and make it easy for programmers to adopt their language. I think the concept behind making Java was a good one, but Sun the corporation swung from their goal of creating something that would help people to something that would hurt Microsoft. And that's not what it's supposed to really be all about.
To swing back to the
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
I really wish Microsoft would quite creating programming languages, look at the monster they created for Visual Basic, or VBScript. Ughh I wish they would just use someone else's language to write their code in and not feel like they have to create some shitty "user friendly" language that is weak, useless, and widely accepted by them.
Feel free to download the SDK and see for yourself. There are over a hundred messages a day on the Developmentor .NET mailing list, both from people actually using .NET, and from the MS developers working on it.
Microsoft may choose not to release the final product for some reason; if so, though, that's a business decision they'll make, and even if they do make that decision, the alpha SDK and framework will still exist. It's certainly not vaporware.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
All I've been hearing is .NET this, .NET that, .NET is revolutionary, but not a thing on what it is!
Errm... nothing that I can see. Microsoft are reportedly betting their future on it. Well good for them. Maybe they'll go at least partially down the tubes. I'm using Windows at the moment, and don't like it. Why am I using it? Because of the state of Linux ICQ clients I can't get through my local firewall without ICQ2000b... without Windows, ICQ might run properly on Linux. Who knows?
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
what on earth are you saying?
Just a brief note: I have been developing on Windows for years in Delphi. Java can't touch Delphi for speed on Windows.
However, Java is cross platform. I can create Java web applications on my W98 machine, and then copy them over onto my Production Linix boxes.
Where does .NET fit? Its a Windows only Java - so you get all the performance problems of Java with none of the cross platform benefits. I mean, you don't honestly believe MS will be in a hurry to support other OS's?
"Sun wants you to wear their handcuffs."
.NET, so my views stand right now. If someone wishes to point out a logical counter to the original article, I will be glad to read it and possibly revise my position.
Really. Java is platform independent. While Sun did not succeed with the initial performance claims for Java (ala same speed/execution times) for the various platforms, you can write Java code that can be easily ported to any platform. I say easily as a friend did manage to write some code that he had to modify so that it would work on a Mac (he later learned what he did wrong there). This latest 'offering' my M$ is for the Windows only environment(s).
Now I don't deny them the right to produce for just their product, but to try and claim that it would become a 'standard' is a little annoying. Now I haven't read a counter-point to the original article on
Eric Gearman
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Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
In case you missed the link at the bottom of the page, look at this article by "Joel" called 'Microsoft Goes Bonkers":
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 33
It gives a wonderful insight into the inner-workings of Microsoft from a former employee who worked there for three years.
There is also an (anonymous) reply from a current Microsoft employee who backs up pretty much everything Joel says:
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$1 37
Definitely worth a click.
It compiles (on the fly) to a form of bytecode. I think that it's possible to distribute only the bytecode. Still, it's not hard to decompile the bytecode. If you're worried about people "stealing" your ideas, perhaps an ASP ("application service provider", not "active server pages") approach would be more "secure".
"Regards,"
Toby.
P.S. sorry for the overuse of "s
Not to mention that it is very simple to use an RPC over HTTP using XML for interchange model, and in doing so, remove any laguage dependancies. At my last job, we used HTTP RPC to call into a ProvideX system from a J2EE system. If we needed to call into Microsoft, it would have been no problem.
It is very easy to pick an RPC architecture that is friendly to disparate platforms.
-no broken link
Second, Microsoft - and Sun, to be honest - is a corporation whose primary objective is to make money for itself. The execs in Redmond don't care if something is innovative or even technically impressive, so long as it is popular and profitable. (Yes, that is an exaggeration - MS may be the Empire, but there are real, live people there, too.)
Finally - and most importantly - Microsoft's .NET platform is going to be attractive primarily to developers and companies who are already using Windows-based products. They already have a large user base and a brand name that will attract new customers. All they have to do is keep coming out with new things often enough to keep people's interest.
MS doesn't expand its user base by developing creative new products, it wins people over by marketing a perception that its products are easy (or at least easier) to use. It's up to the developers to wrestle technical shortcomings under control so that the users never know there's a problem.
But that will always be our job: keep technology looking like magic. ;)
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Santa tells me you're bad. That makes you good in my book.
No they aren't!
.NET to Linux/Unix!
In the wed. edition of the biggest Danish newspaper (called Jyllands Posten), there was an interview with Steve Balmer where he states pretty clealy that they have absolutely no intention of porting
Greetings Joergen
Everything you say there is true, but I have to say that the Microsoft compiler they used for Visual J++ was the best java compiler I ever used.
I'm reasonably certain that the MS JVM was one of the faster ones available for a long time.
See the one Java Compiler bug I found ..
Steve
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I'm sorry, but until I see proof that C# and or .NET is actually up and running...
You may obtain a pre-beta C# compiler andAND someone shows me how superior it really is to everything that has ever been
When new technology is announced, you should assess it for yourself - each project is different. If you program primarily in UNIX, then you will have little need forSorry to sound flamebaitish
Apology accepted.-jerdenn
Here in (large company that makes their own PCs, servers, UNIX varient, RISC processor, and lots of printers) we're playing with .net code and platforms to see what we can do with it. First impressions are "sticky place to work". I'm betting that a good, clean alternative from Sun could win developers rapidly. Of course, our own ideas in this arean are nifty too.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Linked of the article. Funny article by a former Micro$oft employee saying that .NET is vapourware. Worth a look
here.
Death to the more successful tyrants!
www.ridiculopathy.com
if you don't like it, there are many other fine discussion boards you can spew on. Mr. Barkto.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Language lock-in. Java, being supported very well by both Sun and IBM with completely different VMs, and by the FSF with gcj. That's still not vendor lock-in. You want language lock-in, look at Visual Basic. Seems to be only one implementation of that language. And it doesn't have a published, open, although unfortunately not ISO specification. Your point is non-existent.
Second, JSP a ripoff of ASP. Please. Both are derived from CGI + OOP. Did you just start monitoring the industry last week? Or did you grow up on Cnet articles?
I do agree with you on C# being a good evolution of the MS tied VB and visual C++. VB is very useful on certain problems, but lacks a lot of features that I enjoy in both C++ and especially Java. C# looks like a good move, but a lot depends on how they implement. Objective-C was a brilliant evolution that died on C++'s altar as well.
As for Corel, although I had a lot of hope for them, the implementations of their own products on Linux, which I paid for and tried, were rather weak. StarOffice is way beyond that. So I don't have a lot of faith in them for the cross-platform torch of MS.
On that note, look at the COM legacy. Marketing FUD and renaming aside, it's a weak version of CORBA. But the desktop strength is had is great, and is being adopted by CORBA in v3. Just as COM+ is evolving to be a CORBA competitor. Problem: Platform lockin again. At least with CORBA, if Sun pisses me off on implementation of OS, I can move to IBM, HP, MS, or Linux. COM+? SoftwareAG's product isn't cutting it. COM an open standard? Find me a document that reflects the MS implementation on Windows 2000. I believe it is you who doesn't know what they are talking about. Perhaps you should follow your own advice.
As for implementation security, never mind. You don't get it. The VM is the environment in Java. In .NET it appears to be the OS again. Solaris isn't the risk necessarily. The JVM is. But .NET, it's still the MS OS that's at risk.
As for the interpreted language article, I think you had better check your facts. Many of the JITs, and not just Java, are pulling within percentage points of the native code. And it will get closer. I used to agree with your stance that interpreted wouldn't get there, but for one that's not true anymore, and for two, sometimes that doesn't matter.
My few humble opinions. Take them as you will.
Yes, I know about Chillisoft.
That is not what the guy was talking about.
He specifically said that it would
be an official MS product.
---
RobK
Myddrin
Microsoft.NYET
Python = LISP + infix operators (which LISP always had by no-one used) - about 5000 ()'s.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is just typical anti-MS rhetoric. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the stuff MS DOS, but at least they eventually create new software , instead of keeping a 30 year old system on life support.
I'm sorry, but I would like to move forward instead of living in the past. You sound like you're one of the guys trying to keep COBOL alive.
And as far as the comparison, it's not apples and oranges. THEY ARE BOTH OPERATING SYSTEMS! THATS THE LEVEL AT WHICH I AM COMPARING THEM!
and Sun (Oracle|IBM|whoever else) isn't?
.Net will let MS customers to do things they couldn't do easy, easier. .Net will let people who go with MS for their solution use their IDE, and all the languages that plug into their framework.
.Net is a response to the idea that using J2EE you can do things easier than you can with existing MS tools.
.Net is MS trying to give you an IBM experience.
.Net is nothing without developers trying to solve your problems for you with MS tools. Hence all the hoopla.
.Net is about letting people write their apps on the MS platforms using MS tools. Apps that can use internet standards to interoperate with other servers using internet standards.
.Net is going after the large amount of businesses that haven't yet gone to J2EE. Heck the large amounts of businesses that don't even know what XML is and why it would help them, that employ geeks like us to show them the way.
.Net is that warm fuzzy feeling that MS is going to take care of you by selling you and your VB developers that design SAP packages and intranets and interal discussion boards and online sales catalogs the thing you need to solve your problem, and back you up when you need it solved.
But
.Net is MS selling things to the people who are already their customers, and people who don't want to know another way. Which is most people.
.Net is making writing software on the windows platform and the windows internet platform easy.
Technology is nothing compared to what technology is used for. Solving problems.
Microsoft doesn't care about the 10% market that knows what they're doing and doesn't want a nice IDE because they're using Emacs or Vi. They want the 90% of the "normal people" that do IT for large companies and small businesses.
They don't care that much about the hardcore slashdot audience.
Forgive the usual 'rehash of old technology rant', but didn't Sun themselves come out with an 'every device on a network offers up services to be consumed by other network service devices/providers'.
It was released about 2 years ago and it's called Jini as I remember.
Ok, i give the many languages angle is nice. All the other marketroid gibberish is FUD tho.
http://www.sun.com/jini/overview/
If it really differs from this, show me how. I don't see it myself.
Slice is nice
Sun is the DOT in .NET
I wonder if MS can enforce a trademark on "dot NET", even if it's in common parlance already. ("Windows" was unenforceable trademark but "Microsoft Windows" is okay.)
[
I said:
.NET is planning to support, and these systems can all interoperate. In fact, Java's network and component specifications are going towards a more language neutral format with RMI over IIOP and the next generation CORBA specs and products that allow IIOP access to EJBs and deployment of EJB-like services in any language.
.NET objects created in C++ can inherit from objects created in any other language including Java. In .NET, local (none networked) cross-langauge object reuse is easily done unlike in broken-ass CORBA.
.NET security, transactions, high availability, failure recovery, naming services, are clearly defined and built into the architecture unlike in CORBA where different ORBs have different behavior since the base CORBA specification is so loose and most services are optional and thus unsupported.
Java shackles developers by forcing them to use the Java[tm] platform for all development in all three tiers of a client-server application if they plan to use the Java[tm] language for any aspect development
You said:
Not true. CORBA has bindings right now for just about as many languages as
CORBA is a broken specification, and this has lead to the creation of the CORBA Component Model based on EJB which is modelled after DCOM and MTS.
With
In
PS: If you are interested I've written a paper comparing CORBA, DCOM and RMI which points out the myriad shortcomings of CORBA.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
The only reason it might succeed, is because they already have a large number of developers depedent on their software (i.e. lemmings). If Microsoft changes direction, they will have to follow.
Java has too much of a head start, about 5 years (I think), which has given it time to mature. MS can't bring a product to maturity that fast, take a look at Windows for instance.
Well, I got an OT mod...so you should be happy.
.NET strategy...when there are phenomenal opportunities to be had via coalitions and cooperation.
At any rate, around 15 years ago most corps were getting a lot of complaints at their shareholder's meetings about "corporate behavior", dealings with employees, environmental issues, etc. (GTE was about the hardest hit, as well as GM and GE).
Now? Hardly anyone questions corp. behavior...that is, people are so obsessed with greed and profits, they have lost their ability to "detach" themselves from their investment and analyze the possible ramifications of their investments.
Microsoft is an excellent example. If the employees/shareholders were able to detach themselves and look at the bigger picture, I would expect at least 20% or so to form some type of revolt and officially complain to the board.
But there is not a peep -- nothing. This is scary to me, since I believe the following:
"Microsoft shareholders and employees would be FAR BETTER OFF staging a revolt against their companies' current policies of isolation, and demand a complete and total adherance to standards and cooperation with other computing platforms"
Why? because the current philosophy of isolationism is great for the short term, but possibly devastating in the longer term.
By failing to (honestly) join in with other companies, they risk losing the lawsuit in a couple years.
By failing to (honestly) join in with other companies, they put the long-term viability of the USAs software leadership at risk...they force competition between the USA and other tech nations to be an "all or nothing" deal...that could come up nothing for the USA.
I just find it amazing that MS continues this march...with the
Even more amazing is that some of the groundbreakers at Microsoft, people were in early, and are now phenomenally wealthy and have almost nothing to loose, can't detach themselves and do a employee or shareholder's revolt.
The short term embarrassment and financial losses might be distaseful/painful, but the long term benefits and stability of a truly open and cooperative Microsoft could be mind-boggling -- not only for the USA but for the whole world.
It's just a shame that the employees and 'neauveau riche' of Microsoft can't see past their pocketbooks.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
That said, the .NET hype machine is clearly aimed at PHBs, not tech-heads. Microsoft's had some big wins by aiming their PR this way (the people who write the purchase orders are, as they say, where the money is), and they aren't going to stop now.
I think they're letting the Marketing team go crazy with this one. It's not about cross-platform, barely cross-language.
All it is, is the next reiteration of the COM+ DNA architecture. And a 10 word description of DCOM is being able to run a DLL off of another computer's resources.
COM components are mostly DLL's that are encapsulated, allow you to access their methods. Then you have an architecture explaining how they talk to each other, and the way they access their data. A possible middle-tier solution in a 3-tier environment. And almost as an afterthought, it happens to be usable with a web-base front end.
That's the thing that gets me. It's not really web-centric at all. Oh well.
So first there was COM, then COM+, and not .NET
They're just trying to squeeze their Visual Studio closer together. Sprinkle some more XML support, try to get a CLR running (Common Language RUntime) (Which by the way, won't include FoxPro playing with the CLR, and is why VB 7.0 will have to be retooled)
I doubt anyone's reading this since it's so low on the Slashdot front page, but oh well. Just had to mention the extreme un-importance of .NET with the rest of the world.
unless you think microsoft might port it's window's APIs
This, in a thread whose subject is one letter away from WINE? The WINE project has been creating a free reference implementation of WinAPI that will be very useful for creating .NET class libraries.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If it doesn't run on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows then it doesn't run for me. Really, I need my apps to work on all these platforms. .net has no value for me.
Coderhacker
by someone else you don't really have any freedom which is what .NET stands for
Respond to s
Two words: Visual Café. Or perhaps one conglom-o-word: JBuilder. Java is becoming the next corporate fad (XML, servlets, applets, etc.), and Sun, Symantec and Borland are cashing in.
Check out winamp.com sometime. They run entirely off of servlets, and are lagged like hell. 100ms per function call was pretty lenient for an insult, since that means about three transactions per second (I'm guesstimating here), which is okay for a web server, just not great. Hence the reason why winamp.com is always bogged down: high demand + latency at the code level = noticeable lag on the client side. Of course, comparing jsp to cgi is like comparing applets to oranges (hehe, get it?), so a more quantitative analysis is necessary (which I'll leave up to the business magazines).
Well, sort of. Javalag is so notorious that the term itself really should be copyrighted by Sun, who can then charge publications for using it. As for the rest of the post, it's sad but true. Java lags. You can't deny that, no matter how hard you try.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
lol
This one was pretty good. Happy you implemented random gibberish linking.
Keep on...
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
"This latest 'offering' my M$ is for the Windows only environment(s). "
.NET training seminars and supposedly (you never can be 100%) Microsoft has said that they will be releasing a .NET JIT compiler to run the IL (Interpretive Language) that .NET languages create for the MacOS, and even *NIXes.
Actually, this is not accurate. I have attended a few
My company does this, and we do distribute our software as "frozen" executables. This compiles everything needed to bytecodes and produces a single executable that is statically linked with the interpreter.
Not exactly like Java bytecodes + JNI + JVM, but close enough. Unless you know what you're looking for, the end result is indistinguishable from a compiled C/C++ app.
The guy in charge of Software at my company analyzed the bytecodes and concluded that reverse engineering them is nearly as hard as for Java, although there are definitely some ops that are less primitive.
PS: Look for freeze.py in the python distribution.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. I'm not saying any language is 'better' than C++ in general, just better for certain cases. For what you were working on, I think your decision was probably the best one you could have made. But for somebody wanting to write an app to interface with a database to track sales or do time entry, or practically anything business related, C++ simply takes too long because it makes things that are simple in VB very complex and you don't get any measurable performance benefit. Once again, for the scenario you described, more power to you. Anything that needs to be highly efficient is better off on a unix"like" system. Real-time = NOT Windows in my opinion.
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
There is a MAJOR difference in the way that Sun and Microsoft do business.
.NET works? It's buried in a vault in Redmond.
And I'd rather read about a protocol developed and implemented by MULTIPLE companies than one that's implemented by ONE. Where's the document on the deep internals of how
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
My case story: I spent six month last year trying to develop a spacecraft telemetry decoder in NT4 using C++ in MFC. I quit after I realized NT4 simply is designed the wrong way, from the GUI downwards to the kernel. After following every instruction I could squeeze out of Microsoft documentation regarding real-time programming, I found that, with the PII-333 I was using, the CPU wasn't fast enough to run the digital signal processing code for FM detection and write the results to disk at the same time. Even after doing the most efficient hand optimization of assembly code in the inner loops of the program, there were gaps in the recording.
Seeing no other alternative, I decided to try Linux, using the Qt toolkit and Kdevelop as the development environment. In ten days I had rewritten the GUI part of the program, which I linked with the C++ FM demodulator I had written first, without the assembly optimization.
Surprise! It worked flawlessly, not a single bit was lost. Running "top", the system usage analyzer, I found that the same program that the Pentium II-333 was unable to run in NT4 used only 12% of the CPU, of which 10% was for updating the screen and 2% was for the digital signal processing. None of the profiler, debugger, and analyzer tools I had tried in NT4 had told me this. I had lost six months trying to optimize 2% of the system, while 98% was being wasted by NT4.
Today in my workplace there are two Linux computers running in the desktop, used by a team of satellite controllers to perform maneuver calibrations on a fleet of five satellites. They have adapted well to it, but they still use the dual boot to Windows 95 for all other tasks. Conditioning is hard to overcome, although, in my case, I use now Linux for everything but "Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed".
In conclusion, in my experience, nothing beats C++ plus the Qt library and Kdevelop for both rapid development and portability (Qt is available for other platforms, although it's GPL only for Linux).
I personally agree with the article. I think that M$ is trying to improve their software/services, giving their clan an updated set of tools, so that it could compete with the rest (Java). Yes, VB/VC++ ppl will benefit from this big time, as well as ASP+ sounds really exciting.
But M$ is making a very smart move, they will for sure benefit from, this will get noticed by many big companies which are M$ solution providers. My point is, nothing will change. M$ will continue to have its supporters, it will continue dominate in the personal computer field, it will still be able to compete in Back-End stuff, it will still keep of stealing other people's ideas (C#, ha!), and nothing will change for the next five years.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Ah, once again the /. community has proven themselves to be a bunch of whiney sissies. I hate the fucking complaining about M$'s new software product. .NET wants to do the same sort of thing everyone else wants to do, make programs you can use from anywhere and that can communicate with everything. As long as you conform to the .NET specs you can write an ap in any language you want. The runtime fills in the machine-specific blanks that are only referenced to in the app. This means few to no hardcoded apps that don't migrate well. Theoretically the runtime can be written for any platform you want, practically you'll probably see it show up for Nx, NT and CE based systems. Offices in 2002 could be running a bunch of thin clients running a CE kernel and .NET runtimes that cost a few bucks that do as much as 2000$ machines in offices do now. That is the promise of Java that has even yet still to materialize. The only production software I've ever seen use this concept is/was Applix with their ApplixWARE which was their office suite written in Java. Only recently has Java seemed to have matured where this is a really viable concept. For the anti-capitalism RMS clones out there, GNOME has always been really forward with their ideas to make GNOME fully CORBA compliant. So I can make my little l33t picture in Gimp and run a filter that exists on a server then have it fly magically into the word processor program I've got running. All this happening without me having to worry about complex commands or configurations. I think Sun's biggest neener neener is that Microsoft will probably try to lock .NET stuff into M$-based server products while JSP and servlets can be run by just about anything. This seems logical given M$'s history but they also have to worry about getting the whole .NET thing accepted and made profitable. They ought to document the shit out of the whole project and let people add .NET functions to anything they want. That way houses with high powered Unix servers but a bunch of M$ clients will get included into potential customers. Oh well.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What no-one seems to be talking about with the Common Language Runtime (CLR) is how M$ can potentially write a CLR engine for other OSes. With that, developers would have many language choices that could run in an OO environment on many platforms.
So with Java you get one language on lots of platforms (and lots of VMs per platform, I might add) and with .NET you have the potential for many languages on many platforms.
I was actually at PDC2000 this year and saw all of this stuff up-close.
I love Java, C# is cool too. Either way the developer has a great tool to work from.
I'm a 2000 man.
For example:
A lot of the same reasons why I like PHP over Perl...
But Sun is missing the point. It's possible that they've gotten so miffed with the slow Java adaptation of Java that they view everything as a threat. .net is exactly what they say Microsoft 'claims' it to be, however - an enhancement to bring Visual Basic/C++ up to speed with modern times. It allows whichever language you're writing in to access all _windows_ API calls.
.net is the solution rather than Java. If you're a Netware Guru, for example, compare NWAdmin32 to ConsoleONE. (Win32 vs. Java) They do the same thing, but if all I had to use was ConsoleONE, I'd quickly go insane waiting for my P500 or higher to open a dialog box.
Sun's point, in the article is that Java allows you to access the same API calls, and they'll function on any machine imaginable, which is true. But if you're going to be programming FOR a Windows box (and, last time I checked, developing code to run native in an OS was still the way your program would run the fastest)
Perhaps I should change my login to slashdot to 'Devil's Advocate'. =) Java has it's niche, though. And it does what it was intended to do - make code HIGHLY transportable. But you can't outrun native code, no matter how good your universal language is.
Lastly on platform independence, just realize that Java isn't any more platform independent than anything else, it's just got an interpreter that has been written for each platform! If a new platform comes out, it won't run Java at all until someone writes an interpreter for it....
Other than, say, having to write a new compiler backend?
"writing a new interpreter for the platform" is actually as simple as pickup up the JVM source code (yes, Sun releases source to their JVM) and recompiling it on the target platform.
How we know is more important than what we know.
For those with short memories, let me remind you of the "From One Source To Many" article that's still a part (as of vc++ 6.0) of the MSDN.
This thing was written for the transition from WIN16 to WIN32, and suggested that if you just port your code to WIN32, they'd give you Macintosh support as well from the same source code.
For a hefty sum, they sold you an add-on to vc++ 4.0 that indeed provided a Mac compiler and DLL's to run WIN32 code on the Mac. And it (almost) worked - that is, it almost produced workable Mac applications.
Of course, it really worked for MS, because what they apparently intended was to focus all development to WIN32, killing then rival OS2's chances, and seriously limiting the amount of native Mac apps.
Oh, and by the way, then they pulled the plug on the thing, and now only MS gets to use the WIN32 for the Mac DLL's.
And some of you think C# will be supported on non-Windows platforms!
Let's not forget a key point.. Some argue that MS is not doing any harm in making a new extension to Windows... They're saying they _can_ support other platforms, but the target is obviously windows.
.NET utilities, then it's only a matter of time before people start to use C# in place of applettes. They made heavy reference to the security box.. This is mainly useful in web-downloaded ActiveX / Applet components.. Meaning they would absolutely love to lock browsers into the latest and greatest feature sets.. To do cool 3D things, you'd need a good hardware card. To do cool multi-media things, you'd need the latest version of Windows. To do productive things, you'd need the latest version of Office.. So long as these are prolific, (say 80% of the market), venue's or company's can require that all their customers / clients have windows xxx, Office xxx, MS-feature friendly hardware xxx.
.NET is to say.. Yes, take the sample drug.. Learn to like it.. See how wonderful life _can_ be.. Oh.. what's the matter? It doesn't do everything on that platform? Well, you know, they're a second rate place.. Come to us.. We'll give you a fix... There.. See how much better a one Solution Vendor works?
I can't believe that the SUN folks missed the gun, however. They are arguing that this will undermine Java by MSing network applications while maintaining control.. HOWEVER, the real danger is that MS makes the number one browser. They completely control what gets put into it. It's one theing to fight over HTML standards, it's another to fight over plugin standards.
Currently, if you want compatible cool stuff on you web page, you use flash (who's goal is to reach every platform and desktop). MS has tried various techniques to make sure that the only browsers out there are MS, and that the "best" place to run their browsers is Windows. Ideally, many features would only work if you had their full Office suite, which is where they can really tie in the money.
IF, they succeede in making everyone love C# as the code-base, along with
As with the above, the only reason MS would want an open standard on things like IE or C# or even
MicroSoft - Incredibly small, yet powerful. Just like the virus.
-Michael
AtomTime does it. One button to sync. Can also be configured to do it automatically, again with just one button. But that's an example.
date -s "$(telnet time.infa.net 13 2>/dev/null | grep 2000)"
Please look at your example. Tell me why I should have to type in 50+ characters when a single mouse click can do it fo you? Unix is MUCH more flexible with what they give you to start with, but my biggest complaint is the user interface. I don't want my operating system to be a programming language of it's own.
I write programs for a living in the Windows environment and believe me, nothing sucks more than trying to track down a non-existant bug in your code, just because Windows happened to blow up while you were testing something new. But I just don't have a personal use for that much flexibility in the OS. I don't need to be able to redirect output or input for any device/location in the world. Not that I hate *nix but I just don't have a practical use for it myself.
On a similar note, I may have a use for it in the near future, so we'll see.
If anybody really wants to convince me that *nix is worth anything, point me to a list that shows its revolutionary improvements. Not things like "device drivers for latest video card", but real innovations. To me, its development has been done in baby steps.
I don't use Perl, I use C++ instead, but I feel the same way about devices.
Certainly the most time lost in programming is debugging. (well, maybe not by the programmers of certain software companies who seem to do no debugging at all...) And debugging *demands* a console. What is simpler, 'printf("got to xyz, variable xpto has value %d\n", xpto)', or setting breakpoints, opening variable display windows, scrolling to the variable you want, etc, in a debugger? I seldom use debuggers at all, the printf way is so much better.
Having said all this, what can I say of Microsoft Windows *, where programs have no consoles? Sure, you can go all the way and create a console window. You can even format text and display it in the console window you created. And it's simpler to create consoles in Windows 95+ than in the 3.* series. But I still think writing 'printf' is easier and faster.
i guess it depends on what you define as the platform... the hardware? the api layer? the os? cause technically the apps run on all of those
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
How, exactly?
You see, this is the whole, central absurdity of .NET- at some point you have to stop crying out "Cross language object reuse is easily done!" and actually IMPLEMENT it. It's all very well saying that, but what evidence is there that this makes any sort of sense in the real world?
Here, I'll answer you with an equal counter-argument: In CORBA, cross-language objects give you freshly baked chocolate chip cookies unlike in selfish, mean old .NET, which cries like a little baby when it can't get people's undivided attention.
How is your nonsensical, hypothetical claim any different from my nonsensical, hypothetical claim? Are you claiming freshly baked chocolate chip cookies don't exist? *g*
Does this mean that no matter what language you use, you now have to use a Microsoft compiler? Or does it mean that no matter what language you use they are dependent upon MS for the spec to be 'compatible' with .NET- which is being specified in rather _general_ terms that aren't useful to a person writing a compiler for another programming language?
Java is NOT platform independent as ANY Java programmer worth his/her weight knows.
Yes it is. You can of course write JNI, but that is discouraged.
I have written Java code that runs quite happily on AIX, AS/400, OS/2, and WinNT.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Frankly i dont give a damn who robbed who, which works best for you???
see earlier poster (or go to http://sources.redhat.com/java/ ) -- A feel dirtyWill the Java runtime functionality matter in practice? That remains to be seen. Maybe Sun tried to do too much for the industry to swallow at once. Maybe .NET is better matched to the incremental needs of Windows programmers. But let's not compare apples and oranges. Java isn't just .NET for only one language, it is much more powerful than that.
.NET is proof that the marketroids have taken over Microsoft.
The article poster writes:
.NET on it's Java home page"
"Sun decided that to post a response to
But, althopugh the link is indeed on java.sun.com, the writer turns out NOT to work for Sun, as one click on his name-link produces the following:
Madhu Siddalingaiah is a founding principle of SEA Corporation, a consulting and development firm. He has published numerous articles and books about Java technology and speaks at technology conferences around the world.
forget the .net. COM is the bomb. Developing a front end in VB and linking it to a crypto engine in C++ is a joy to behold and Microsoft Visual Studio does it so well. I especially love the autocompletion and the tooltips that popup. What is utterly suprising is the fact that COM actually has a comment field for each method in the object. Yes, you can actually document the object in the object and it will display in the development environment.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I haven't look at the .NET stuff in awhile so I'm not exactly clear where Microsoft stands at this point.
.NET aren't handcuff...its a shackle.
Sun's point is valid. Its nifty that Microsoft takes it upon themselves to implement a bunch of tools and services for the internet. Unfortunately for Microsoft the Internet is a hardware independent beast. If Microsoft creates a bunch of software that only works on their OS and refuses to be open about their communication protocols then
Microsoft should be open as possible with their Internet products. If they don't, there will be hacking on their protocol to reverse engineer the protocol. If Microsoft refuses to write software to support other platforms and they refuse to keep as much of it as open as possible then it leaves those who want to work in other hardware and software configurations with little alternitive.
The document's there, but don't count on it allowing you to create a compatible infrastructure. Take a look at some info on COM vs. CORBA on the web to get more of a taste as why CORBA is still alive. :-)
Welcome to threads. Makes all sorts of timing problems possible.
it takes so much to move from smalltalk to LISP. hmm.. I send a message with one paramater to this object and it returns an object that expects a message with one paramater.. wow.. that's like currying.. heh! That's like a lambda function. In the end it's all the same.. a language is a language is a language.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The first line - Slow Java^H^H^H^H adaptation of Java.
I type too fast, and think too slow. Maybe I should use the preview button or something.
"Actually, this is not accurate. I have attended a few .NET training seminars and supposedly (you never can be 100%) Microsoft has said that they will be releasing a .NET JIT compiler to run the IL (Interpretive Language) that .NET languages create for the MacOS, and even *NIXes."
If true, I stand corrected. I guess my impression of M$ remains from what it was a couple of years ago, where such cross-platform support would not have seriously been considered. The Mac portion makes sense with the financial support Gates has given/bought. The *NIX support is a *little* more surprising, IMO.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
If .NET is about cross platform programming, where are the specifications for the cross-platform runtime and the cross-platform APIs? Without those, .NET is merely a VisualBasic runtime on steroids--nice for Windows programmers and occasionally capable of running on non-Windows machines, but nothing more.
Isn't it /. , not ./?
Guess you were using a Microsoft spell checker.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Hate to nit-pick, but if you're going to correct someone, at least give them the good info.
Scott McNealy is Chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems. The president (and COO) is Ed Zander.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
what would you prefer? I shiny new padded set of handcuffs, or a key to remove the ones you have now? I'm not saying Sun is the key, but I'd worry less about the cuff upgrade and more on finding (building?) a key...
He's using the Sun Java plugin, which embeds Sun's VM into IE, not MSFT's.
No surprises for an article written by a sun employee. MS has announced Corel will implement the .NET port for Linux.
As regards java being platform independent,
java ports on platforms other than Windows/Solrais
leave a lot to be desired.
Lets cut the crap and get to the heart of it. Statistics will prove MS wrong once again here. For example all it takes is a little research to find out that the .net CLR is actually written in C++ which right out of the gate gives you slower performance by an order of
(a/b) * a.(1/b) due to the dynamic late binding of C++. Okay, that's a fact, the proof can be
on Professor Kyzinsk's web page.
.NET stuff you are dealing with a VC constructor that is already overloaded on every instruction.
.NET very flexible because you can generate a polymorphic polymorphic constructor on a standard method. Yep, that lets you do nice things like super(super(super))). But do you want to talk slow???? It's been pretty well
documented that Java will always be faster than .NET. Not to mention that .NET has no support for RMI. Heh.. can you say strike three you're out.
For you non-believers here is a snippet of the code from .NET....heh..pure crap.
Second we all know that in java you reference everything by a reference, unless you are working with primitives, which only a rookie does because they are about 50% slower than a pointer. With the
That's right, that makes
All the best,
--Bob
> Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor neutral solution which is the Java platform, like most of the industry, Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor specific solution.
:-). And it looks like they're doing their best to make that wet-dream come true (Mr "95% market share is not enough").
Vendor neutral? This makes perfect sense if MS considers themselves the *ONLY* vendor in the market
As an extension to that old adage of the Golden Rule ("he who has the gold writes the rules"), I'd add the collorary "he who writes the rules, defines the gold"). By offering a single target platform, no matter how badly/well implemented, it creates a mass market for other ISVs (assuming you don't mind being borgified into their app-division if you get too big). It will be an interesting marketing exercise to see how they will sell the concept ("write once, crash everywhere" just doesn't cut it). As always, it's the secondary benefits which may prove more useful in the long-term, the Wintel duopology create a mass of low-cost machines for Linux to thrive, perhaps this will commodotise high capacity broadband communications (look at where MS are investing their spare change)?
LL
Seriously, though, tone down the rhetoric just a smidgen, okie?
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
No, it's .GOV - they asked and helped the government go after M$ for their own commercial gain, and therefore they're tied to the government now. So it's .GOV for them!
John 17:20
Any moderate+ sized .NET application well need core windows services and APIs to operate. That's like having a jvm without most of the core java language libraries. Just porting (if THIS even happens) the IL code over to other platforms won't allow any real use of .NET ... unless you think microsoft might port it's window's APIs
And .NET will run on any platform where Microsoft runs :)
that is a quote from the submitter of the story...not an editor's mistake
--
--
You are a fucking moron.
Most of people seems to have prejudice against Microsoft and .NET.
.NET, and how perl can steal ideas from them.
Larry Wall has posted to perl-6 mailing list in August about C# and
Be open.
Cheers,
my oh my, sun is really getting pissed that msft dared to one-up them in the virtual machine game. :)
:)
.net - using com as a wrapper, it lets completely unrelated languages operate with the operating system and with each other [link]. can you imagine, writing your application in some nice OO language, say, Python or C# (not C++ - garbage collection is your friend!), with a text processing front-end written in perl, user interface in something pretty like VB, and maybe a lisp/scheme scheduling or AI engine in the background, all working seamlessly?
the question of course is, which one is better? they're both pretty reasonable, so far as vms are concerned, and java does have the cross-platform appeal going for it (although anyone who tried to actually develop cross-platform software becomes very disillusioned very fast.
but there's one truly beautiful aspect of
using each language in what it's best at, and all of them together to accomplish the task. that's the ultimate programmer's dream. screw cross-platform compatibility.
My other car is a cons.
Ah, you caught me. This is very true. I just thought it was worth mentioning.
I'm not a compiler/language design expert, so I can't really comment on how good/bad .NET/JVM are for multiple languages. What I do know is that some of the different languages available for the JVM are very useful. I'm thinking particularly of JPython and SILK.
So, .NET has features good for language independence. This is cool. Java has a large, generally useful, cross-platform API. This is also cool.
Everything's cool.
Ok, Like it was tough to improve the piece of shit known as Visual Basic. It is allowing people that probably shouldn't be programmers to have jobs. On to point number two, M$ is a company filled with very very smart business people. They make money by tying thier products together. They get in trouble by tying thier products together. Until they are told to do otherwise, they will continue to keep tying thier products together. This is why people like Ballmer and Gates are philthy ass rich. Because they realize that the more indepth they can form a web of M$ products, the more that people are going to go out and get the next greatest thing which will cause then to shell out more $$ to upgrade older M$ stuff to work with the new stuff. It is a nasty cycle and they are making a lot of dough out of the deal. Granted, I think that it is a shitty way to do business, but they Government hasn't stopped them yet so what can you do.
- there are opensource implementations of the JVM
- You can download the java spec from suns website, perhaps not as open as it could be but try to get document describing win32 in full
- JSP has a freeware implementation
- there are a lot of other opensource projects based on Java.
- there are multiple vendors selling Java development tools as well as opensource projects providing such tools
- there are dozens of other languages implemented on top of the JVM (check this site for a good overview. JPython is cool BTW!)
I hope this makes it clear for once and for all, Java is here to stay. It does most of whatJilles
I sure as hell am. .NET will do nothing more than limit innovation. If you read the MS propaganda, they take away almost all functionality for the sake of security and stability. Obviously because they can't make the memory management work in Win xxx, they're going to take everything away, so you'll never get a BSOD.
.NET with them in mind. I know .NET is suppose to support all languages equally, but they are dumbing it down to a subset of the existing APIs.
.NET will never come to be. If they release it, I'm switching to Linux.
It's nice that they're trying to make this thing stable and secure, but they're taking it to the extreme and don't realize the problems they are creating. They seem to have notion that all developers use VB, and are creating
This all stems from MS attempting to make every product they ship, into a development environment. I don't need my browser to run my system. I need my system to run my browser, which in turn, I only need for loading web pages. They are trying to allow everybody to become a developer, and the truth is, not everybody should.
Cross-Platform compatibility, security and stability. We need these things, but do we need to give everything up for them? I don't want to have code everything in low-level assembler, but I don't want to eliminate my ability to use it if I need to.
I'm really hoping that
...Microsoft is spinning [.Net] as innovative new platform but what they're really doing is giving developers an updated set of handcuffs...
:)
.NET is an effort to help traditional Visual C++ and Visual Basic programmers catch up with the times....
.NET platform as a whole will handed over a standards body, so standardization can only exist at the language level....
.Net. M$ has already given Corel the responsibility for building the Framework for Other OS's including Linux. Obviously it would be benefit them financially, but we are not tied down to one OS ultimately.
.Net framework over to other OS. I would believe it when I see it, but efforts are underway. So if you dont know what you are talking about then SHUT UP..and dont mislead poor tech junkies out there.
.NET platform must run on Windows, and Windows alone....
.NET is to perpetuate platform lock-in. ....
:)
....
Yeah Right.. The same one Java Developers wear
..Essentially,
Tell me whats wrong with that Bozo !!.. Both these languages has still a huge market share than anything else in the world. And most of the existing systems currently being ported and rewritten to other languages are developed in it. What Microsoft is doing is trying not to lose market share, and in turn come up with a Loosely coupled architecture for integrating and deploying heterogenous systems. Yup..Flame Me.
....There are no third party vendors of ASP+. In contrast there many vendors of JSPTM solutions for a variety of platforms...
First off all, JSP was a ripoff from ASP. ASP has a much bigger developer base and ASP developers has been crying for better features and thats where ASP+ comes in. Now ASP+ will use Visual Basic, C#, and possibly other languages for code snippets. All get compiled into native code through the common language runtime (as opposed to being interpreted each time, like ASPs). So you could mix and match languages and not be tied to Java alone.
...Microsoft has not suggested or even hinted that the
First of all, Sun doesnt work well with IBM or anyone else in opening up Java. Now they cry wolf when MS doesnt open up the Framework For
..The Java language, VM, and APIs are all vendor neutral. There is no vendor lock in....
Yeah right..except that you are locked in to one language who still dont deliver in terms of Portability.
.....The key difference is that the Java platform is a mature cross-platform solution with no direct ties to any underlying operating system.....
Where does this guy live ? Antartica ? Corel would work with M$ in porting the
...This means that any nontrivial application built on the
Tsk..tsk.. This guy just dont realise..does he..
...Apparently, the underlying goal of
Pure Unadulterated FUD.. No wonder since SUN sponsors this guy's Chopper Trips
....Sun is not the only vendor of the Java platform. IBM, Symantec, Apple, as well
Well didnt we all hear sometime back that these other vendors were planning to liberate Java from Sun ? tsk..tsk..
...Third parties have inspected the Java platform's publicly-available source code for security holes.....
True.. But Sun should rather worry about closing the holes in Sun Solaris 2.7 before they comment on Windoze.
Ultimately, no Interpreted language would ever handle a candle to something that compiles to native code. M$ is leveraging that to provide integration across heterogenous platforms through the CLR. Like it or not..its going to happen and thats what make sense.
My two cents.. Thanks for reading.
Rapid Nirvana
..Essentially, .NET is an effort to help traditional Visual C++ and Visual Basic programmers catch up with the times....
Both these languages has still a huge market share than anything else in the world.
Yeah, just like cobol had a huge market share. Remind thee, that nearly every college teaches basics of programming in Java - Clean api, pure object orientness, no need to force students nor collages buy any licenses.
visual basic may be easy, but doesn't teach well o-o and doesnt have a clean class library. c++ is way too complex for the first language. C# is a lot better, but still suffers from win32 api. I woudn't expose a newbie to it. Heck, one can scare kids with something like win32 threads!
Wonder what all those who have been teached Java will do once they graduate? Learn another language while the one they know already does what they want?
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
I'm glad that Java is platform independent and such an incredible tool for enterprice. You can write nice Oracle extentions in Java and they won't work with any other database.
.NET is language independent; Sun's platform (Java) is platform independent. Big deal. I am guessing that .NET eventually will be platform independent too. You can use perl in .NET right :)
.NET; I care about how user friendly they are implemented, which Microsoft is doing pretty good.
I am very happy to see that Microsoft is challanging Sun, Oracle and others. At the end consumers will be the winners.
I think Microsoft's new platform will be pretty cool. First of all, they have Visual Studio. They have really nice GUI for developers. Second of all
I like the idea of having a common garbage collector, and run time. I don't care how innovative the features are in
I don't really like Microsoft, but why should I like Sun or Oracle?
Hmmmm...
I remember when I went to the "training seminar" [a misnomer, it was a marketing pitch] for
Visual InterDev 1.0 in Pittsburgh, the Microsoft speaker swore up and down that activex, MTS, and ASP support was "just around the corner" for solaris, linux and macintosh....
While they may have straightened up, I would take such claims with a large grain of salt.
---
RobK
Myddrin
Nope.
.NET to Linux. If MS opt so, they should hand over the sources to MS .NET, and Corel is entitled to a non-transferable, sitewide source-license. As I remember the text from the agreement (It's not by the letter, but freely from my memmory).
Your memmory don't serve you...
In an agreement (made when MS bought some non-voting shares in Corel), Corel agreed MS may optionally have Corel port MS
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I dual boot Linux and Windows... but in the programs I've been developing lately, I've been booting more to Linux using PERL than to Windows using VisualBasic. Why, when VB is set up with more of the functions I desire, would I do that? Simple: Microsoft locks the user into inflexible paradigms of "device" metaphors, making it nearly useless in several circumstances.
I went from DirectX to OpenGL back when MS was pushing "vertex buffers" and "callback routines" just to draw a single triangle on the screen. The device metaphor was crippling. In PERL, I can write a generic script whose output can easily be diverted to console, file, or device. In VBA, the object modelling constrains you to cast your functions against specific application objects... bleh.
Microsoft got their start in business licensing MS-BASIC to every home computer they could. Once they started the Windows gig, they said "Empower the user?!? What were we thinking!" Now their VBasic bundle is only found in applications, and empowerment comes at a price.
I cannot fathom their adversarial stance over their own customers. I believe the backlash is coming sooner rather than later.
The early assessment is correct, and Madhu Siddalingaiah agrees: C# and CLR might be portable -- and sure, it's possible to port them to other operating systems -- but that would still be completely useless, because the .NET framework involves a lot of API's that are, and will be, only available on Windows. The core class libraries in Java, on the other hand, are available anywhere the Java runtime is available.
.NET framework is designed for this goal: "Write once (on a Windows machine), run anywhere (as long as it's a Windows machine)."
Make no mistake about it: the
Probably the only useful bit of "portability" the Microsoft CLR will achieve, is that it gives them a migration strategy for upcoming 64-bit Windows. It allows developers to write on Win32 and run on Win64. Oh, how portable!
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Is Microsoft going to release a new version of their French tickler?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
the statement 'write once, test everywhere' is still much in vogue.
... clean up your own house before you start tearing down someone elses.
Now, I don't write much Java, being a Sun sys admin and all I tend to use Perl more because I need closer access to the OS. And the few I have written have not been GUI oriented and would probably run on all platforms. But it seems that if Sun really wants to get into the 'one language for all platforms' that Madhu Siddalingaiah says, then they still have a lot of work to do for anything but trivial programs.
For example, a current program our developers are working on uses the Sun plugin for IE. The same Java applet performs differently in Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. And I don't even want to talk about the problems they had with the Netscape browser....
Come on Sun
Microsoft, can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
When people buy an application they have the right to use it on their computer. What this BS is trying to do is basically remove you from having access to your applications and your data. A very bad idea indeed.
Respond to s
If you ask a lot Java developers (like myself), they will tell you that the combination of Java and Python is extremely powerful. JPython is an incredible tool that allows you to use the strengths of both Java and Python.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
My posts can be used by anyone at all because I believe in the freedom and it's continued use in the free without restrictions.
Respond to s
Why on earth do colleges keep spitting out marketers? Sun seems to have a passle of particularly annoying ones. Between their idiotic branding and versioning campaign (Java 2 Standard Edition Version, um, 1.3) and this transparent attempt to propagandize the masses ('.. for all those developers who have not *yet* adopted the Java platform), I don't see why Sun imagines these people are worth having around.
Unless they double as janitorial staff after hours, or something.
Seriously, I love Java, you can do a lot of tremendously nifty things with it, but as long as Sun uses Java for proprietary interest, they'll find themselves reaching for the spin knob. As long as you have to fight to convince the world that they want what you have and not just to tell the world what it is that you have, you're swimming against the tide and are doing something fundamentally non-productive.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Umm... I guess I'm getting somewhat tired of people commenting on .Net without really taking a critical look at it.
.Net they can communicate together.
A core basis for it's existence is Cross-Platform support. Microsoft understands that companies do have multiple systems in their environments which need to work together.
Unlike Sun, Microsoft is not suggesting that you should write all your software using Java. Instead they are saying... write your software with whatever language you want and then using
Microsoft's goal is to have services which run on Win2k servers talking to services running on Mainframes or Unix servers.
This happens today, but you need to devise some custom solution to make them talk with each other. Microsoft is simply providing a generic framework for you, so you can focus instead on the solution details.
Pretty much what you'd expect from a review of Volkswagens written by an executive at Chrysler.
The .NET platform is an improvement for Visual C++ and Visual Basic programmers, but it is yet another proprietary Microsoft platform which will tie the developer to Windows, albeit possibly a .NET-ized notion of Windows.
.NET is the exact opposite. It's purpose is to allow developers to actually use COM and the Windows API without being shackled to VB and Visual C++.
.NET to support the following languages APL, CAML, Cobol, Haskell, Mercury, ML, Oberon, Oz, Pascal, Perl, Python, Scheme, and Smalltalk. In fact, Rational is planning to create a Java-language compiler that targets the .NET common language runtime. The details are available on the MSDN site.
I love Java, but this is simply bullshit. The main purpose of
Currently there are plans for
Obviously this scares Sun and that's why they are publishing this propaganda because it begins to show the truth that Java shackles developers by forcing them to use the Java(TM) platform for all development in all three tiers of a client-server application if they plan to use the Java™ language for any aspect development (yes, I know about JNI, but it is currently subpar).
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Microsoft have been very keen to show that the CLR is not tied to just one development language. They have guys working on, for instance, and ;Co bol(!) implementations, which seem to be a proof-of-concept demonstration of the independance of the CLR. While, as the article is at pains to point out, the basic concepts aren't new (although what in computer science is?), it seems to me that the .NET framework represents a interesting and new set of ideas to work with. Bear in mind, as another poster pointed out, that there is no reason the .NET framework cannot be ported. But even if not, it seems a little unreasonable for to lambast microsoft for producing something as obviously fully developed as this.
Admittedly, using propietory keywords in C++ is a horrible thing to do.
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
the guy says that .net hasn't been released so it's still too early to do a direct comparison.
.net finally arrives. then it'll be time to analyze things and make a decision.
let's all keep coding the way we've been until
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
This sucks.. this is one discussion really close to home for me *and* I have moderator points today.
.NET CLR (take a look at ActiveState, they seem to be in bed with MS - there's a Python .NET beta ongoing right now).
.NET too. (Or maybe not, this might be pure FUD, but SOMEONE will do it, even if Rational drags their feet.)
;+)
Post or moderate? Post or moderate?
POST!
Don't like Java's (too low) level of abstraction? Tired of being stuck on Windows because of your employers obsession with VB?
Convert them to Python! They'll be happy how fast you get things done AND they'll love the easy portability to Linux, Solaris, Macs, etc.
It just makes sense. Today, I can even run Python in a JVM. I can run Python in the
If Microsoft never ports the CLR to OSs other than Windows, you STILL win.
Now, here's the kicker: Java will be available for
Now, observant people will point out that regardless of the fact that you would be using Python or Java, the fact that you're using it in a JVM or CLR naturally means you will use the libraries in those environments. And that's true. However, it's nothing a good designer couldn't mitigate to a large extent (not perfectly I know) using the GoF strategy pattern and other abstraction techniques. Furthermore, most of Python's standard libraries are already ported to the JVM. It's just a matter of time before they show up for the CLR too (and for Java too).
Also, learning both sets of libraries and both Java and Python will simply be good for your career. You'll honestly be able to claim multi-architectural proficiencies, from the comfort of a high-level development language (or at least a "higher-level" development language in the case of Java).
Now, anyone who can poke substantial holes in this will be doing me a favor. My general career direction in the near future will be Python/Java heavy because of my assumptions above.
Just to clarify something: I approach this purely as a corporate applications designer and developer. I have no interest in systems-level stuff, embedded systems, real-time systems, etc. Very little of the above even matters for those area (although there are embeddable versions of Python AND Java, as well as a hard real time version of Java).
Thanks in advance for your rabid attacks!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Microsoft is awesome.
Never has a corporation so blatantly and publicly violated federal law in such obvious ways, and, via the internet, been so widely documented.
Never has the US judicial and legislative systems been exposed as being fundamentally incompetent/inadequate to deal with rogue, illegal corporations.
Never has the effect of "dumbing down" of the US population been more obvious than when people support Microsoft without bothering to read the facts of the case or understand the consequences of allowing monolithic control of software systems or development.
Microsoft has done so much more than just screw the public over a span of a couple decades...they have exposed fundamental flaws in the legislative, judicial and education systems of the USA in a very painful way.
For that alone, they should be thanked.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
And Java has?
I believe IL stands for Intermediate Language, not Interpretive. MS vehemently oppose that .NET uses a VM, they push hard on the JIT angle. In fact, they've elevated it to a verb, JIT-ing.
.NET. If anything, they're going to get worse, because MS loves to push the Windows GUI to the extreme. Try porting the latest Office GUI to Linux. Good look.
Besides, any claims of future cross-platform availability of MS technolgies can be safely filed under "bullshit". It sounds good to say now, and might win some early converts, but once the smoke clears it will be Windows all the way. Witness Internet Explorer for Unix (mind you, not for Linux), the orphan child.
Another issue to keep in mind is that cross platform is easier said than done. This has been written about at great lengths after the Java smoke cleared and people were wondering why code isn't as portable as was promised. Most non-trivial apps--particularly UI-intesive ones--make use of a lot of platform-specific features that are not portable. That (and performance of Swing) is why Java is more popular in the non-GUI server world. Those issues are not suddenly going to go away with
First ..
.com
.com domain
.NET strategy
.NET domain
.pl domain
Sun claim they are the dot in the
it's claim java is cross platform
everybody register
Then..
Microsoft with it's
everybody will register
What's next???
Larry wall claim his perl is cross platform too
everybody register
we move to poland
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
First (and very OT), if I had mod points, I'd mod you down, too....
Yeah Right.. The same one Java Developers wear :)
The handcuffs that are being referred to are the ones that handcuff you to Windows. How does that relate to Java?
building the Framework for Other OS's including Linux. Obviously it would be benefit them financially, but we are not tied down to one OS ultimately.
How are they going to port all of the Windows APIs that .NET works with? This claim is just bogus to try to lure developers who think that they'll eventually be able to code cross-platform with it.
True.. But Sun should rather worry about closing the holes in Sun Solaris 2.7 before they comment on Windoze.Are you trying to suggest that any version of windoze is more secure than Solaris???
Your whole argument here is, unfortunately, little more than the M$ party line. You haven't added anything substantive to the discussion, you've just sprayed out a bunch of irrelavencies and hopes for what M$ just might do in the future.