Portable.NET Now 100% Free Software

rhysweatherley writes "Finally after months of hard work and bucket loads of caffeine, the DotGNU community has finally got Portable.NET to the point of building our C# libraries on many Free Software platforms with our own C# compiler. This is a big deal! Portable.NET is now 100% pure Free Software, with no dependencies on third party C# tools. The compiler, which is written in C, bootstraps off gcc, so there are no icky 'how to compile the compiler' problems. And it's fast! The DotGNU team consists of lots of contributors, many of whom are coincidentially named 'Rhys Weatherley,' but this wouldn't have been possible without the support of the DotGNU community, especially the Weekend Warriors. .NET is not the only thing we are doing. We're playing around with JVM and Parrot (of perl6 fame) backends to the compiler. And we have a C compiler front-end that generates pure bytecode apps that can run on any decent CIL implementation (Portable.NET, Mono, etc). We are about 95% of the way towards our first milestone of an ECMA-compatible C# implementation. There are lots of things still to be done in the low-level C# libraries, runtime engine, and the compiler. So, if you have some time on your hands, and like messing with languages and stuff, like yours truly ... have look and maybe have some fun!"

Comments

Cool

[koko775]

and there goes one of M$'s advantages! Can't wait for GPL .NET software for multiple platforms. ^_^

Re:Cool

[JonWan]

How long before Microsoft changes or adds something for "security" reasons and prevents you fron using open-source .NET? Maybe we need to start a betting pool.

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

I doubt that will happen. They'll add something and make the open-source engine work mostly, but as a less-reliable system with fewer features.

And they aren't going to get MS sorts using it (even ignoring the pre-installed issue that beat even Netscape's best efforts), because MS put lots of money, time, and talent into their own VM, and the GNU one just ain't gonna be significantly better any time soon.

The .NET move was a pretty good move for MS.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow are you guys stupid. The only reason these hairy greasy GNU freaks could do this was because MS released the shared-source implementation of the CLR.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Now perhaps is the time that someone explains
to me the virtues of .NET ...

I can already run GPL'd software on all platforms
I have here (Compaq Armada Laptop, DS-10 Alpha
machine, Titanium Powerbook).

Just install Debian GNU/Linux and ... off you
go.

So what's new with .NET ?

Toon Moene.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow are you guys stupid. The only reason these hairy greasy GNU freaks could do this was because MS released the shared-source implementation of the CLR.
>
>
Who cares? CLR along with the rest of .NET is pretty
much a non-starter in the non-Microsoft world. Nobody is going to really adopt it all that much. It's the new Active-X. A lot of noise by the Windows crowd but pretty much ignored by everybody else.

Re:Cool

[JonWan]

They'll add something and make the open-source engine work mostly, but as a less-reliable system with fewer features.

Exactly... You won't be able to use Linux to access online shopping websites or any place else that requires the new security features. The same ol' "You need IE to access this website" shit.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

See the thing is you can,

A) Develop for the propriety C# dependent on a company which might decide tommorow that the language is a dead end and drop it leaving developers in limbo.

B) Develop for the subset of C# implemented by an open source system and have a far longer lifetime guarentee for your system.

Sure for your average webmonkey it won't make much difference, but the people who are spending the big money in developing systems that will still be around in 2020 they'll go for option B.

Re:Cool

[arivanov]

Nope.

First, they are trying to do a full ECMA certification for NET and make it standard. In order to do what you are saying they will have to withdraw from the certification standard which immediately gives them a serious disadvantage in the war against java which is what this shit is about.

Second, deciding to apply for the certification process they have taken into account that making the language a standard will create alternative implementations. Not just GNU. There will be commercial ones as well. And that is the idea. Because there is something that makes .NET always faster then java if implemented properly on intel architecture. It is the fact that it is a little endian standard while java is big endian. Assuming everything else equal .NET will always win. That is besides the fact that many third llparty developers will actually prefer to deal with an ECMA standard language then with a Sun standard.

This is the idea of .NET. Sink Java. And so far it is proceeding very well on target and on schedule with the help of the GNU community. Nothing bad about it, I hate java so any means of killing it should be cherished and supported. The problem is that after sinking java MSFT can deal with competitors on their own turf exactly as you describe and we will be back to square one where we began. To perl and python as the only "portable" languages.

Re:Cool

[The Original Yama]

Then the community has an excuse to fork the standard. The FOSS community has an impressive degree of leverage -- just look at how Bruce Perens' threats to fork Web standards made the W3C reject RAND licensing.

Besides, the .NET framework is a very useful tool in itself, without MS compatibility. It suits the FSF's need for a flexible, secure, fast, language- (as long as the app is somewhat C-like, anyway) and platform-independent infrastructure for the development of network aware applications and services.

Re:Cool

[Synn]

The MS reps I've heard have stated multiple times .NET is a Windows-only system, only that it would "play nice" with other standards.

They're quite frank about keeping .NET on windows and windows only.

In fact that's what Sun is selling in every debate about .NET vs Java: Java gives you multiple vendors while .NET traps you into one.

MS may let .NET run on other platforms, but you can bet the bank they'll do everything in their power to keep it a "windows preferred" platform.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is big endian ? What are you smoking son ? Java is as much big-endian as C is. That is, not at all.

What pushes you to write such crap ? I don't like Java much, and believe that on a technical basis the CLR is superior to the JVM, but at least I understand what I am talking about...

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the OS version must add more new features before MS do?

Re:Cool

[jrs 1]

nobody cares about your point of view anymore.

Re:Cool

[xswl0931]

Thank you for stating the obvious.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody who uses linux buys anything, including Linux.

Re:Cool

[occamboy]

If MS prevents .NET from fully running on other platforms, they will have a big problem selling .NET.

Linux is going to stick around as a server OS -- it's a huge pain in the ass in some ways -- the "user experience" is a big problem -- but it is really superb as a server, and is being pushed by big guns such as IBM. If Java (which I'm personally not in love with) runs on *nix & Windows, but .NET is Windows only, then Java will win.

Re:Cool

[abdulla]

If you hate java, you seemed to be dealing with a similar looking devil with .NET. They both have big horns, nasty teeth, and can hog attack your system resource in a horrible way. In fact, one look at there face and you'll be frozen in terror, ah The Ring's had a horrible effect on me...

Re:Cool

[thelexx]

What precisely do you mean by "full ECMA certification"? Last I heard it was just the language itself and none of the libraries. Which is effectively the same as none of it being submitted since MS can still break compatibility across platforms that they themselves don't support. So it boils down to trust, which I have zero of in MS.

As for your endianness claims, here's part of two messages from a Google group search on the issue:

One:
"Java specifies the endianness used in object files, and (I believe) the
endianness used when writing numbers to binary data files, but the
language is defined in such a way that there is no way for a program to
tell which endianness is used for in-memory representations. So long
as the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) implementation does the correct
conversions when reading in `.class' files and when read/writing binary
data files, it is free to use a little-endian represention internally."

Two:
"If you'd bothered to study the JVM before jumping to such conclusions
you'd know that, in a .class file, the constant pool contains
_unaligned_ data of _variable-length_, endianness is completely
irrelevant. The thing _has_ to be parsed byte-by-byte... Not even
the bytecode vectors are aligned within the file, although the
tableswitch' and 'lookupswitch' bytecodes are word-aligned within the
code vectors, so these are the only constructs that would require
extra work on a little-endian machine, and only in the 25% of cases
where the code vector happens to be word-aligned by accident....
Incidentally the format of the constant pool _inside the JVM_ is
completely undefined and up to the implementor."

Re:Cool

[Matts]

just look at how Bruce Perens' threats to fork Web standards made the W3C reject RAND licensing.

You know, this is pretty hysterical. You're looking at the world through the microcosm that is Slashdot. The W3C didn't reject RAND because of Bruce Perens, they rejected it because their members didn't want it, and because many people in different communities (the XML community, the Web community, the vector graphics community, etc) fought against it. RAND was really unpopular in all but the larger members of the W3C (e.g. Microsoft, Adobe - and even they fought internally about it), because companies realised that they were better off with RF specifications.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess, I think you're trying to be funny. But you're failing. You know full well that "Platform" does not mean "Hardware Platform".

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

"And they aren't going to get MS sorts using it (even ignoring the pre-installed issue that beat even Netscape's best efforts), because MS put lots of money, time, and talent into their own VM, and the GNU one just ain't gonna be significantly better any time soon.

That is not necessarily true, although Microsoft has an abundant amount of money the company lacks talent, innovation, vision and common sense, and this wont get better no matter how much time passes.

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

I *would* agree, but the problem is that people have frequently taken option A in the past (esp. if a powerhouse like MS is backing it, and MS has made quite a show of backing .NET to the hilt).

ASP. IE/Navigator web extensions. Visual Basic. FrontPage extensions. Javascript that works on only IE. All these were things that (at least at one point) relied on a single company, yet many people chose to go with them.

It's worth considering.

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

they will have to withdraw from the certification standard

Why? As long as they support the language (and presumably a certain set of library code, haven't looked at the exact requirements), they should be gold.

serious disadvantage in the war against java which is what this shit is about

Not really. Has gcc fallen beside the wayside to Sun's or IBM's cc because it supports extensions that go above and beyond ANSI (well, now ISO) C? No. People frequently use gcc or gmake because code uses GNU-only extensions that are useful. I use the --verbose flag of GNU rm in a particular script, for another instance of being willing to require extensions.

alternative implementations

This is completely and utterly not an issue for MS. They ship .NET on all their machines. Anyone using extensions is going to have things work just fine on a Windows box. Furthermore, I seem to recall MS going up against Borland, Watcom, and a couple others and squashing them in the past while *using* a language that's quite standardized (C), yet VS code not infrequently uses extensions to C and C++. Matter of fact, the reason the cygwin/mingw/gcc guys don't do MFC is because it utilizes some VS extensions. What makes you think that this would be any different?

Because there is something that makes .NET always faster than java if implemented properly on intel architecture.

True. Java is, and will always be hobbled by performance. I think that sacrificing performance was a fucking stupid idea on the part of Sun, but that doesn't imply anything about whether MS will extend .NET or not.

I hate java so any means of killing it should be cherished and supported.

Ah, well. Someone has to break Goodwin's Law. There were Germans that said the same thing about communists right before Hitler's rise to power...

we will be back to square one where we began.

You mean MS will be in control of the primary popular application development language?

To perl and python as the only "portable" languages.

Um...no. You just quoted performance as being the crucial issue, right? Perl and python are both quite slow languages when compared to real programming languages -- I'm not sure whether perl or python really fall into the "scripting" or the "programming" language set.

Perl is completely and utterly useless for developing a full-scale application. It's a slick language for hacks -- nothing, nothing can compare with the power of ten lines of perl code. But somewhere above a couple hundred lines of perl, I've found that programs generally devolve into unreadability and the lack of types becomes an issue.

I don't know about python -- I don't use it. I suspect that again performance would be enough of an issue to kill it in any fight against .NET. That's not really what python is intended to be used for -- general application development. It's nice for rapid development and scripting. Prototyping. Not putting out a finished, runs-on-end-user-systems product like a word processor or a web browser.

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

It's possible that the JVM bytecode engine can contain bit-level ops and is big-endian. I really don't know if it is, but it's possible. Other than that, I dunno what he's talking about.

You could always use a compiler that compiles Java to native code instead of a JVM...

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

Not putting out a finished, runs-on-end-user-systems product like a word processor or a web browser.

And before someone invokes Sketch, you will notice that the performance-critical portions of the thing had to be written in C. (It also isn't as fast as the excellent sodipodi, though that is neither here nor there. BTW, if you haven't looked at sodipodi recently, it's up to the point where it can be used for (light) production work. I remember when the GIMP got to this point and development exploded. Mmm...Linux has vector graphics now. :-)

YAY !

[Gopal.V]

I guess it's time for happiness all round ?....

.NET for Linux

[RebelTycoon]

Time to re-evaluate... It might be good afterall...

So confused... Is it weekends that we like MS, or just Saturdays, or just 6-7pm EST...

Damn it...

Re:.NET for Linux

[koko775]

A lot of their ideas are actually not that bad -- Windows being the obvious exception. granted that word and excel were practically taken from other suites, but MS had implemented it in a half decent way. However, as the years go on, it gets worse and worse...

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when the Microsoft ads are running on slashdot.

Same thing for big media. When the lord of the rings ad is running big media rocks! When the ad isn't running big media is evil!

Re:.NET for Linux

[galacticdruid]

No - we don't like M$, we like good programming languages that let us get stuff done fast and help our companies stay competitive... :-)

Re:.NET for Linux

[Phil Wilkins]

A lot of their ideas are actually not that bad

A lot of their ideas are actually someone else's.

Re:.NET for Linux

[the eric conspiracy]

granted that word and excel were practically taken from other suites

Word is a junk product as far as I am concened, but Excel 1.0 was clearly superior to the competition when it came out for the Mac. I know several people who dumped their PCs running Lotus after working with Excal. Of course they switched back when Excel came out for Windows.

Unfortunately Microsoft's market position has effectively quashed any attempts to displace Excel as the standard spreadsheet. There was a time when Wingz was better than Excel, and Lotus had a very interesting product for OS/2 for a while. This is very bad as far as I am concerned because Excel is really oriented more towards business users than I would like - which makes it harder to use for the scientific and engineering applications I am involved in.

Re:.NET for Linux

[xswl0931]

You just described Linux!

Re:.NET for Linux

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

A lot of their ideas are actually not that bad

Microsoft hasn't been all that good at innovating. The only real innovations I can think of were Microsoft Bob, and it's bastard child from Hell clippy. Neither score major points with me, though I give them points for being attempts at least to break away from the WIMP metaphor..

Re:.NET for Linux

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

C# is not a Microsoft idea. It was actually created by a University (I searched hard for the link, I couldn't find it). The CLR idea and stuff was from them. MS did polish it up some, surely, but the core innovation came outside.

MS is kind of like the anti-PARC. Where Xerox PARC came up with revolutionary things but could never put them to market, MS stares so much at the market it can't come up with any revolutionary things. Thing is, they have anough money to buy the revolutionary things, and do what they do best, polish them and market and sell them.

Re:.NET for Linux

[drinkypoo]

Microsoft has has plenty of good ideas, or at least been the first to implement plenty of good ideas. The one-button way to do everything (the start-button) makes good sense, now everyone is copying this interface. Microsoft even moved still more things into it. Of course the taskbar (who made that up, anyway? arguably you could say it was xsm, assuming xsm predated the first version of CDE (or openview) which featured a toolbar. I can't think of a window manager older than that that does things any way but by pop-up menus. Longhorn will feature a taskbar (as we have seen in recent screenshots) so a lot of the Mac types who don't know any better will think that Windows is copying mac; Let them know better.

Anyway we don't like MS any time but when your "enemy" (I don't know that too many of us could call M$ our nemesis beyond RMS and other GNU/Zealots) has a good idea, you don't just disregard it. You use it for your own ends. This is what "we" (the free/open software movement members; users are members by extension as well) are working towards by implementing such things as Mono. There's no reason we can't implement heavily cross-platform OO software using C# and .NET on Unix. It doesn't even have to run on Windows!

Re:.NET for Linux

[Zeinfeld]

Microsoft hasn't been all that good at innovating. [vcnet.com]

And Linux would be what? a trully innovative implementation of a 30 year old operating system using the same coding techniques.

The whole industry is the same. Lotus didn't invent the spreadsheet, Oracle didn't invent SQL, Apple didn't invent the windows and mouse GUI, Linus didn't invent UNIX. Most of the ideas in UNIX are taken from Multics.

Re:.NET for Linux

[inode_buddha]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the last time I saw clippy, I unbent one end and used it to clean some body parts. "Bob" was unavailable to comment on my actions since he had gone on to found a major religion (Church of the Sub-genius)

Re:.NET for Linux

[Otter]

So confused... Is it weekends that we like MS, or just Saturdays, or just 6-7pm EST...

Rule 1: Everything from Microsoft is bad.
Rule 2: Unless Miguel says it's good, in which case it's good.
Rule 3: If you need it to play games, it's a necessary evil. X-Box purchases can be justified by asserting that they cost Microsoft money, and one is therefore attacking "Micro$haft" by buying one.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has has plenty of good ideas, or at least been the first to implement plenty of good ideas. The one-button way to do everything (the start-button) makes good sense, now everyone is copying this interface.

You're ignoring the 'Apple' menu, which has been there since the early days of the Macintosh.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.

Re:.NET for Linux

[mrbnsn]

The reference you are looking for is Colusa Software, a spinoff from research at U.C. Berkeley.

• Microsoft buys Colusa Software (March 12, 1996)
• White paper on Colusa Omniware (PostScript format)

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this have to do with C#?

Re:.NET for Linux

[haruchai]

To me, it's not the point that Microsoft didn't invent the technologies a great many of their best known products.
What gets me is that they are the ones crying about the "freedom to innovate" and how legislation and other restrictions hampers their efforts.
Innovation comes from bright,free-thinking minds.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Malcontent]

Linux does not pretend to be something it's not. MS does.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you new to computers?

The Apple Menu originated as a barely configurable kludge so that you could launch the calculator applet on a single-tasking OS.

Even in the more modern version (postdating CDE and other 'start menus') was never the place to "Start".

Re:.NET for Linux

[TummyX]

Linux does not pretend to be something it's not.


It doesn't pretend to be a viable desktop replacement for windows?

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux does not pretend to be something it's not. MS does.

It isn't pretending to be Unix?

Re:.NET for Linux

[nother_nix_hacker]

Rule 3: If you need it to play games, it's a necessary evil. X-Box purchases can be justified by asserting that they cost Microsoft money, and one is therefore attacking "Micro$haft" by buying one.

Just make sure you don't buy any games! ;)

Re:.NET for Linux

[elvum]

To be fair, there are a very large number of people in the Open Source and Free Software movements who spend their free time copying Microsoft back :-)

Re:.NET for Linux

[aminorex]

I find Linux to be substantially superior to Windows
as a desktop OS. Firstly, if something is broken,
I can fix it. Secondly, if an API doesn't work as
advertised or is undocumented, I can read the code
and use it anyhow. Thirdly, all of the major
productivity tools are available for free (cf.
OpenOffice). Fourthly, it runs pretty much anything
Windows will run (cf. crossover plugin, Wine).
Fifthly, it's faster and takes less memory, so it
runs well on more hardware. Sixthly, I can
customize the UI much more effectively, without
replacing binary code. Seventhly, I can get
security updates much more rapidly as vulnerabilities
emerge, and when I do, I don't have to sign a
license permitting an untrustworthy entity to
remotely control and secretly install arbitrary
untrusted software on my system. Eighthly,
I don't have to finance Bill Gates' questionable
charitable causes. Ninthly, I'm not supporting
the role of megacorporations in destroying
liberal democracy.... I could go on, but that's
more than enough.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Your points are mostly politically or technically based. I myself use linux exclusively on the desktop - but in terms of usability, even with Gnome2/KDE3/whatever else - I still would have to say windows is a better desktop environment FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE HAVE NO NOTION of API's/source/etc. Regarding the software - OpenOffice is still sluggish and sometimes takes up to a minute to load on my P3-666 with 500MB RAM, Dia still seems like a toy version of Visio, you get the idea (notable exception - Gimp). Mozilla seems to crash a little to often.

All that being said - I firmly believe that the emergence of the superior-to-windows-linux-desktop is only a matter of time. It's just that that time is still a year or two away...

All your points regarding why linux is a superior OS are granted. However - they are mostly not relevant to the subject at hand.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Stephen VanDahm]

And Linux would be what? a trully innovative implementation of a 30 year old operating system using the same coding techniques.

But Linux developers don't usually claim to be innovative, Microsoft does.

Steve

Re:.NET for Linux

[DickBreath]

Microsoft has has plenty of good ideas, or at least been the first to implement plenty of good ideas.

Some good ideas yes. I credit that to pouring tons of money on projects. Money that can be extorted from a locked in monopoly base. Also, Microsoft doesn't have the concerns of a real business of releasing good products. Microsoft can release many generations of screwed up products before finally getting it right. Most others don't survive more than about two screwed up releases. That is, in a competitive market.

The one-button way to do everything (the start-button) makes good sense, now everyone is copying this interface.

While I don't have a problem with the one-button interface, I just want to point out a flaw.

Just because everyone copies it doesn't make it a good interface. Maybe just usable.

For a long time, Detroit made the American cars that were the model everyone else aspired to be. What was the standard copied interface? Courtesy light controlled by a knob to the driver's left on instrument panel. Windshield wipers controlled by another complex knob on instrument panel. A foot pedal to switch headlights to bright.

What did Japan do? How about put the switch next to what it controls, such as a 3-position switch directly on the cuouresy light itself. How about the headlight bright beam on a "light stick" that controls all exterior lights, turn signals, body lights, headlights, bright headlights, etc. How about the other stick controlling everything about windshield wipers.

Now even the American cars use the same controls.

My point? Just because an interface element is widely copied does not make it good. (Or bad.)

As a longtime Mac user, I can recognize one true innovation that Microsoft brought to GUI's. I don't think most people at Microsoft even appreciated it. The focus. The Mac did not have the concept of "the focus". No, really, it didn't. The idea that the focus is not only a text selection when the focus is on a text control, but the idea that the focus can be moved to any control, any button, any radio button, any dropdown menu, etc. This enables the entire system to be capable of being run without any mouse. Pity that Windows XP slacks away from this ideal and makes it such that some basic window manipulation operations now require a mouse. The focus was a true innovation. One that everyone else has copied, and for the better I might add.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

And thinking about rule 1, I can't understand why they are so excited. I'm sure they are great programmers, but they are supporting the evil empire with their project. Boy will they be bummed out when the borg come to assimilate after they worked so hard to make it work.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to build a free workalike and be honest about it (Linus has repeatedly discussed the origins of Linux).

It's another thing entirely to pass things off as your own and profit from it, then use said profits to quell the protestations of the real innovators.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Malcontent]

No it does not, I think you are confusing macOS-X which does promise to be a viable replacement for windows. You may have seen the commercials but I assure you they are made by apple. There are no Linux commercials which promise such a thing.

Linux does however have a very nice desktop environment which I greatly enjoy using.

Re:.NET for Linux

[rnd()]

Linux does not pretend to be something it's not. MS does.

If "linux" (aka the oss community consisting of for-profit companies, not-for-profit companies, and generous and self-interested individuals oriented toward developing software to run on top of the gnu-linux kernel) had a marketing department, people would make the same accusation.

Since "it" doesn't, "we" rely on urban legends and viral marketing.
Microsoft wishes it could market this way, but it can't.

Re:.NET for Linux

[drinkypoo]

Oddly enough I agree with pretty much everything you said. I was just talking to my dad a couple months ago about the headlight interface on all cars today and how it came from Japan. I love it, of course. Of course they didn't do it solely for UI improvement; All of those controls go into one part which costs a lot, thereby simplifying building the car, and making more money selling parts when any part of it fails. Still, the foot switch (while fun, and okay on a car with a slush box like almost all american cars were for a long time) was pretty silly. Your feet do super-critical things, and turning on the brights is not one of these things. Turning them off might be, though...

Microsoft, of course, did not invent focus. That comes from various X-based systems. I don't know if the ability to focus on a button came from windows or not, I'm a little loose on my release chronology.

woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if you can embrace and extend yourselves you'll be all set!

Re:woohoo

[wd123]

Every night at about 1am I embrace myself, and I definitely extend. I never knew Microsoft felt so good!

Microsoft AD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the Microsoft Ad, good placing Slashdot.

Re:Microsoft AD's

[kh0ng]

yeah, mine says "Discover the MS Visual Studio .NET difference, FREE online hostet session". I can even have a FREE offline hostet session so who cares :)

DotGnu and Mono

[fizz-beyond]

So how do the two projects, DotGnu and Mono compare? I could be way off base here, but it seems to me like yet another of the great OSS wars. You know, vi and emacs, kde and gnome, etc.

Can someone please tell me I'm wrong and explain why?

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[koko775]

AFAIK, DotGnu is a compiler and Mono is a collection of the compiler and the libraries.

Mono's programming stuff like gtk# as a C#-accessible ....umm.... GUI thingy

(i'm not exactly smart about this stuff, so this is just a guess based on some quick googling.)

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Offtopic, but VI vs EMACS is a holy war, not an OSS war.
For a long time VI was closed source AFAIK. Also, I believe people that use either are happy that their is an alternative. If there was just one definitive editor, what if it wasnt the one you preferred?
Alternatives are competition and they force eachother to be better.
To swing this post slightly on topic, Its probably best that there are as many .NET implentations as we can shovel out. If MS decieds to try and devour one, we'll still have others. And as i said earlier, Competition is a good thing. They'll have to compete for speed, features, ease of use, etc.
(as a sidenote, I prefer vim.)

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[manyoso]

Mono's compiler is written in C#. Mono has a fast JIT. Mono's libraries include preliminary versions of Microsoft.NET libraries (see non-ECMA) like System.Windows.Forms and support for ASP.NET and ADO.NET. Mono is a joint project of Ximian and the larger community. Mono's commercial nature also limits community participation.

DotGNU is a GNU project and has a CLR/.NET environment sub-project called Portable.NET. Some of the key differences with Portable.NET and Mono are:

PNet has a C# compiler written in C that is very fast, but not as complete. As a consequence it does not suffer from bootstrapping problems.

PNet's compiler architecture is meant to provide great support for new CIL language compilers. Currently, cscc (that's the IL compiler suite) supports compiling C and C# to CIL with other languages on the way. It can also compile a subset of C# to the JVM.

PNet only has an interpreter called ilrun (no JIT) at this time. PNet's libraries are not as far along, but one of the goals is complete ECMA compatibility while Mono's goal is to track Microsoft.NET as
closely as possible. PNet is also talking with the Perl/Parrot folks about supporting C# on the next generation Perl runtime.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean, "OSS" war? The choice is obvious. Only an idiot would use Mono.

(try and appreciate the sarcasm before modding me down. many a foolish moderator has cut themselves on my razor-sharp wit.)

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[nd]

Mono is a joint project of Ximian and the larger community. Mono's commercial nature also limits community participation.

Can you back this point up? My understanding is that Mono has a LOT of community participation, where Portable.NET is for the most part a one-man show. It seems to me that the "community" is largely backing Mono.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[larry bagina]

Competition is a good thing. They'll have to compete for speed, features, ease of use, etc.

yeah, vi and emacs really set the standard for speed and ease of use.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[manyoso]

Because of Mono's affiliation with Ximian and its commercial interest some developers are precluded from participating in the mono-hackers development mailing list. Specifically, if a Mono developer is also associated with the DotGNU project or expresses an interest in Portable.NET, they are no longer allowed to participate in the mono-hackers mailing list.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono has a LOT Of community backing from Ximian, and they have Miguel's Gnome Halo to gather developers ... So it isn't really fair to say that .

After all some guys are paid to do Mono development, All of the pnet guys seem to doing it for Fun... and I like it !

Hmm.... The pnet ChangeLog seems to dissagree with you .. Last month does not seem to be so one sided.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Dave2 Wickham]

Meh, gimme my ed ;)

[dave@tc11 dave]$ touch my_file
[dave@tc11 dave]$ ed my_file
0
a
Ed rocks!!!
Ed combines ease of use and fuctionality in one program!
It rules!
.
2
Ed combines ease of use and fuctionality in one program!
s/fuctionality/functionality/
2
Ed combines ease of use and functionality in one program!
w
80
q
[dave@tc11 dave]$

</sarcasm>

(BTW, someone posted the source for a great clone of ed, indistiguishable from the standard version for normal users on everything2.com:

int main( void )
{
char *strin;
for(;;)
{
printf( "- " );
scanf( "%s", strin );
printf( "?\n" );
}
}

Oh crap, I'm really off-topic here...

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[IrvineHosting]

I read somewhere, I think it was on the Mono site, that they don't think they will ever be able to the Windows.Forms stuff to unixes. The problem being that it is too close tied to the win api. Is there any truth in this? And if so, doesn't this make developing these open source versions of .NET a trap in that most windows .NET apps have a gui so they won't run correctly on linux?? Please correct me if I'm wrong but I read this on the Mono Windows Forms update page.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Gopal.V]

We have a partial JIT for X86 which does basic block transformations ... And we already have a stub PM_Codegen in CVS for parrot

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[manyoso]

Read the post. He never said mono didn't have community developers. "Mono's commercial nature also limits community participation."

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

> most windows .NET apps have a gui so they won't run correctly on linux

From what I've seen, most .NET apps are ASP.NET web apps (which also won't run on linux right now).

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Ctrl-Z]

Work is being pursued on the topic of System.Windows.Forms using WineLib on non-Win32 architectures.

Please read the Mono System.Windows.Forms page for more information.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[IrvineHosting]

Thanks I will check that out! It would just make me sick to think microsoft has this trap set out for us at the end of the tunnel.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Ctrl-Z]

Sorry, the link should go here.

Gotta preview next time.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I laughed at your ed source, I wish I had mod points.. I hated vi "it's better than ed" so much when I was programming UNIX at school, I actually coded on a mac and ftp'ed the code over to UNIX, i hated UNIX editors that much. You do realize your code will core dump on every read, a pointer isn't a buffer. And since you're discarding the string anyway...


int main( void )
{
char buffer[1000];
for(;;)
{
printf( "- " );
fgets(buffer, 1000, stdin);
printf( "?\n" );
}
}

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

If one wants to talk about limiting community participation, it should be stressed that the "limit" argument is mostly on philosophical grounds than anything else.

Mono has parts written in GPL, LGPL, and the MIT X11 license. Each one of these are open enough for community participation, but also allows some proprietary work.

Honestly by providing the different parts of the system under different licenses will foster a larger community than the direction the dotGnu folks are going.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[manyoso]

All true but it completely misses the 'limit' I was talking about. It is not a philosophical argument ;) Some mono developers are not allowed to participate in the mono-hackers mailing list (where technical discussions about Mono reside) because they are also interested in helping and participating in the DotGNU/Portable.NET project. That is what I meant and that is _all_ that I meant.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[nmg]

Do you actually think that you're entitled to a perfect Linux port of .NET?

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[IrvineHosting]

Yes, I do believe that is Mono's intention.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Malcontent]

I thought .NET was an open system. That's what the MS press releases seem to indicate.

Re:DotGnu and Mono

[halny]

Man, just use right tool for the job:

#!/bin/sh
trap "" SIGINT
while true; do
read input
echo "?"
done

This is really good clone - I had to quit it the same way I usually quit ed when I accidentaly run it (^Z, kill %1)

i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

all virii now cross-platform

Re:i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> All the virii ?

He who runs
[bash]$ ./ilrun virus.exe

deserves it

Re:i can't wait ...

[koko775]

**In A.D. 2002 OS War Was Begun** Linus: What happen ? IT personnel: Someone set up us the .NET server. Operator: We get signal. Linus: What ! Operator: Main CRT screen turn on. Linus: Its you !! Microsoft: Hello gentlemen !! Microsoft: All your bash are belong to us. Microsoft: You are on the way to destruction. Linus: What you say !! Microsoft: You have no chance to survive make your time. Microsoft: HA HA HA HA....

Re:i can't wait ...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

now? Silly rabbit, Microsoft has had the cross platform thing down for YEARS. I had the MS Word Concept Macro on SPARC/Solaris 2.51 running Word 6 on WABI.

ye of little faith, thinking Microsoft would have to wait until 2002 for a cross platform threat...

Re:i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

is viruses you fuckwad, not virii, VIRUSES!

Re:i can't wait ...

[Melantha_Bacchae]

cant_get_a_good_nick wrote:

> thinking Microsoft would have to wait until 2002
> for a cross platform threat...

No, they had to wait until they had a Java-a-like that they could control, and a bunch of silly collaborators to port it to anything in sight for them. Convincing the world to make regular payments for the continuing use of their products, as opposed to one charge up front would also be a big help.

Then they can pull out the operating system Microsoft Research has been sitting on since the late 1990's. The operating system that is platform independent and runs on top of their Java replacement. The operating system that will swallow the internet into a single giant distributed network under their control, giving them the 100% monopoly of their wildest dreams. The operating system called Millennium (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/Millenn ium/mgoals.html).

With per use charging, the OS itself could be given away on CD ala AOL, made available for free download, and/or automatically installed on XP machines via Windows Update (gee, I hope you didn't install XP Service Pack 1 which includes permission for them to do this and the .Net runtime). Install it, or let it install itself, and you will be making regular payments to Microsoft if you ever want to use your computer again.

I don't think we have too long to wait. .Net is available for Windows, and well on its way for Linux and OS X. Longhorn may well be Millennium.

Mind you, this is a giant gamble on Microsoft's part, and they are as likely to get nuked (figuratively, or even literally if a foreign country gets too annoyed with Microsoft's attempt to take over their country's computers) as they are likely to succeed. I don't think the company would survive a stunt like this, but they survived Bob, the antitrust trial's joke of a penalty phase, and Licensing 6.

This isn't a case of poor misunderstood Microsoft, either. Why else would they codename the original Millennium JVM "Borg" (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/)?

Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)

Re:i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's it's you fuckwad, not is, IT'S

Re:i can't wait ...

[Melantha_Bacchae]

koko775 wrote:

> **In A.D. 2002 OS War Was Begun**

Actually, it goes like this:

You turn around, and all your lovely Linux MAME servers are now displaying a boot screen logo that says "MILLENNIUM" in gold letters on a blue background.

A little later, after the government tries to blow Microsoft up to free the world's computers, the following words appear on all monitors:

"Earth.. Destroy.. Erase.. Suppression.. Dominate.. Terror.. Prosperity.. Oppulence.. Oppression.. Revolution.. Kingdom.."

Then Microsoft counter attacks.

Don't worry though. Godzilla is on his way. He'll destroy the threat to your computers, kill the evil government collaborator, and trash half your city. ;) Next time, listen to him when he tries to warn you.

Quote and plot from "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version).

Re:i can't wait ...

[antirename]

If we weren't talking about Microsoft, I'd reccomend that you take off the tinfoil hat. The cd in the mail idea is interesting, but they'd only snag AOL users anyway.

Re:i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Keep on masturbating in your bedroom young fellow. You have a vivid imagination.

Re:i can't wait ...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

the OS itself could be given away on CD

In the early days (pre Windows 3.11 days) they essentially did give the OS away, they had a windows runtime for all those folks who didn't have Windows. Granted, this was still on top of DOS, and at those times Windows was less an OS in itself than a presentation manager, but they gave it away.

No, they had to wait until...
Though you did make your political point about them co-opting the world with .NET, that doesn't change the fact that the first cross platform virus was MS with Word 6 macros run essentially the same (because of lax security) on Word 6 for Windows, Mac, and any environment that could emulate enough for one or the other (like WABI on Solaris)

Re:i can't wait ...

[IamTheRealMike]

This isn't a case of poor misunderstood Microsoft, either. Why else would they codename the original Millennium JVM "Borg" (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/)?

[sigh] It's called Borg because they were researching self tuning distributed systems, which is how the fictional Borg were supposed to operate. It is NOT called Borg because they wish to take over the world.

Get a grip!

Re:i can't wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "It's" at the start of the sentence and you should enquote it in order to remain gramatically correct you fuckwad, not it's, "It's".

wow

[absurdhero]

This is a huge milestone. Now everyone who has two hands and 10 fingers needs to get in there and help rhys out! There are lots of things for people to work on. From Documentation to Libraries. so go to http://dotgnu.org and get started!

Re:wow

[0x0d0a]

And have *you* contributed anything whatsoever to dotGNU?

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. We must help out, so that you can get a more usable implementation to which you contributed NOTHING.

This is something I like to call the "open source fallacy;" the idea that if the source code is out there in the open, people will automatically flock to a project and contribute all sorts of work to it. Take a look at the way it really works. There's only a few hundred Sourceforge projects in the "planning" stage without even a released file; many more of those stagnated and died not long afterward. Most people just sit back and wait to get their free stuff -- the equivalent of a bunch of morons downloading MP3's, games, applications all day and night, half because they can't afford it, half because they enjoy the challenge of getting as much free stuff as they can. Very few people like the ideals about Linux so much as they like the fact they don't have to pay for it. I'm sure if someone came up with a distribution that was entirely closed-source save for the kernel, everything else being developed in-house, people wouldn't bitch NEARLY as much about it if they gave out a free ISO for everyone to use.

Re:wow

[absurdhero]

yes, as a matter of fact. I contribute constantly. I read the mailing lists thrice a day, I keep up the macosX port, and I've been learning C# so that I can eventually help out with the pnet libraries. What have you done?

Re:wow

[Istealmymusic]

Way to prove your three original replies wrong. I commend you good sir. ducks

Re:wow

[0x0d0a]

Fair enough -- I'm sorry that I criticized your work. (I'm one of the people that's a little uncomfortable with .NET, and would hardly work on it, and have stuck with other open-source projects like rxvt, snes9x, dillo, gtk-gnutella...).

My irritation stemmed from the amount of hippocracy on Slashdot -- calls to action, claims that people are going to do political activism...but then no one does anything, including the people trying to convince people to do something. You're the genuine article, and I was out of line. :-)

Re:wow

[zoloto]

I only have 9 fingers... You insensitive clod!

Another Look

[Stinson]

Wow, this is just another great announcement, I'm just wondering what Microsoft is thinking...Can they even do anything about this? I know that using C# code (etc...) is free, but doesn't MS have any trade or copyrights on .NET?

Re:Another Look

[Gopal.V]

Yup they have copyrights but we are reproducing our implementation from ECMA spec (334 and 335) which are public

So their copyrights don't matter as we're not using their code . Their patents can be contested as ECMA does not look lightly on submarine patents

And we have GNu to support us !

Re:Another Look

[binary tr011]

actually unlike java which I use .NET is completely free.
It is a recognized standard.
Its kinda wierd that microsoft would hand its IP over to a standards body knowing their track record of monopolizing.
Don't get me wrong I like java and use it but I wish it was open like C or C++ and C#.

Re:Another Look

[pVoid]

Interestingly enough COM is the same way.

I like moft, and I follow their technological advances closely... and both of these platforms have got me wondering if some really high up technical person just made the call without consulting the lawyers...

Hah! That would be sweet: having a mole inside Moft.

Re:Another Look

[Jugalator]

I don't mean to be picky, but I think one should make sure the term ".NET" (which usually mean the entire platform) isn't mixed with the ECMA standardized C# language, which might be what you meant since you later said "... wish it was open like C, C++ or C#".

I usually try to avoid this confusion by never using simply ".NET", since no one can really explain what it is due to how huge it is, just like the Matrix. :-)

Instead of .NET, I use something like ".NET Framework" if that was what I meant.

Re:Another Look

[fferreres]

1) .NET != C#
2) Not everything is part of the ECMA standard, i think just the language and part of CIL spec.

Being a standard, it doesn't mean it's not patented stuff, so it's free now, but will it be free tomorrow?

Re:Another Look

[rastopop]

Microsoft isn't going to do anything - This is just peachy for them. When you have the universe breathing down your neck because you're financially abusing everybody else in the universe, having somebody else implement your system on another platform is really a *good* thing. Makes MS look pretty good where anti-trust is concerned.

I'm guessing that the angry one here is probably Scott McNealy.

Sorry, Scott.

Re:Another Look

[Anonymous Coward]

If Scott is angry he should come up with a better technology and release it free and open to the world and submit to standards groups to boot ... If he just gets angry and whines then he'd better just give up ...

Re:Another Look

[Anonymous Coward]

saying ".Net" is like saying "J2EE".

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as we complain about Microsoft and now we're doing this. Hypocrisy reigns supreme.

Re:*sigh*

[lboxman]

While many complaints are directed against microsoft's technology, I think many more people take issue with their business practices. So, creating an open source implementation of a good technology wouldn't be hypocrisy.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that Microsoft, by open-sourcing the Common Language Infrastructure, is attempting to subvert the open-source movement and believe the the open-source community is contributing to Microsoft's annoying business practices by adopting this "new" technology. I stand by my original statement.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, MS even said so in the 'halloween document' -- as long as they keep the open source guys chasing taillights, they stay on their pearch. If compelling *new* ideas ever come out of open source, they are screwed.

Re:*sigh*

[rastopop]

Hypocrisy aside, the adoption of C#/.NET by the OSS crowd is a good move (in the opinion of those of us who actually like .NET).

My mom (bless her little heart) is one of those people who will argue, argue, and argue some more, even when she has been proven wrong about something - Even when she knows she's wrong, she continues to defend her position.

Her friends admire her conviction, but I would be much more impressed if she could suddenly perform a volte-face and admit that she had been wrong.

I get into arguments with people all the time, and I often lose. When I lose, the average opposing interlocutor will lord it over me - Fingers are pointed, I'm laughed at. But, at least I can admit when I'm wrong.

Along these lines, it's pretty cool that there are some OSS groups pushing forward with the adoption of MS technology in spite of the possibility that the contributors might have, at some point, been steadfast haters of MS and its technology. Heck, they might still be, but at least they know a good thing when they see it, and aren't afraid to go after it even though some members of the community are crying foul.

In the end, it's more important to make good technical choices than to look hip in front of your peers.

miguel can suck my balls

[Anonymous Coward]

ximian are a pack of wankers

the dotgnu folk, on the other hand, "pwn".

anyway, it's good to see IL systems coming of age. anyone else noticed itanium 2's incredible JVM performance?

if portable.net can get up to that level, sun might have some headaches ;)

objective analysis

[galacticdruid]

You know - I'm a tried and true perl and open source hacker and believer. But then I got this job doing .NET and c#. It was hard at first because I've been of the opinion that m$ really sucks because they're a monopoly, they extort $ out of schools, etc. etc.

But in terms of pure technological merit, c# is a damn good language! Especially if you use the vs.net ide, you can get stuff done way fast. So keep an open mind w/ this language. It's very exciting to be able to build stuff using vs.net, and deploy on linux.

Keep up the good work on this project guys!!

Re:objective analysis

[manyoso]

You should have a look at #Develop. I really like it and it is Free Software too :-)

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/default .a sp

Re:objective analysis

[galacticdruid]

Awesome! How does this ide compare to vs.net in terms of ease of use and speed of development? Thanks!

Re:objective analysis

[(startx)]

agreed. I hate to say it, but C# in vs.net is incredibly easy. People tend to forget that Billy boy & co. started MS with compilers/languages, and only moved into operating systems with the guy who wrote CP/M refused to sign an NDA with IBM just to talk to them about there new peecee.

Re:objective analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

C# = J++.

Re:objective analysis

[Ed Avis]

Sure, C# is a good language compared to C and all that. But then that's true of a whole bunch of languages out there. You could easily enthuse just as much about OCaml or Scheme or Ruby or Smalltalk. It doesn't seem that C# is the best language out there, just that it is 'better than C most of the time' (which isn't difficult, now that CPUs are so fast) and 'what other people seem to be using', in other words herd mentality. Which is fine - and the reason why I use Perl - but it's a mistake to think that technical merit and expressivity are something magically invented with C#, any more than the graphical user interface suddenly came along when Windows was released. Although some journalists do seem to have that idea.

Re:objective analysis

[Daleks]

You know - I'm a tried and true perl and open source hacker and believer.

But in terms of pure technological merit, c# is a damn good language!

Compared to Perl, everything looks like a damn good language.

Re:objective analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's just similar. J++ is still "supported", is it not?

Re:objective analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, C# == Db.

Re:objective analysis

[Tar-Palantir]

... or Smalltalk.

Or Objective-C, native language of Mac OS X. It's supported by GCC, and IIRC you can compile Cocoa Objective-C programs for OS X on GNUStep.
Objective-C is truly awesome to work with after fighting with C on Classic Macs for years.

Re:objective analysis

[firewrought]

c# is a damn good language

It's a strongly-type, object-oriented, Java/C++ descendent. It breaks no new ground, but it does have some nice incremental improvements over Java:

• xml-based documentation format (similar to javadoc, but more intuitive).
• richer collection of primitive data types
• conditional compilation macros
• properties (intead of get/set methods)
• automatic boxing/unboxing of primitive types [e.g., an int can be cast to an object]
• foreach() construct
• proper enumerations
• delegates (reduces verbosity when making one-method interfaces)
• attributes mechanism for annotating assemblies/classes/members with meta-data (instead of using javadoc tags as a kludge)

Some off the above features have their dubious aspects. The really bad features (IMO) are:

• fewer constraints on how things in your code (namespaces, classes) must be arranged with things in your filesystem (directories, files)
• wierd behavior of virtual/override/new virtual (I would provide you an example, but the lameness filter wouldn't let me post C# code).

The bad points of C# are:

• less disciplined than Java
• no dynamic inner classes (but Java didn't have them at first either, IIRC)
• no anonymous inner classes (maybe wrong on this one)
• less open source code, existing support, and tools than Java

But all in all, some of these things will improve with time. It should also be noted that the predominant IDE for C# (VisualStudio.NET), the documentation, and the core API's all suck. Especially the documentation... I opened up some Javadoc web pages after working with .NET for a month and almost cried at how easy it is to navigate and read compared to VisualStudio's crappy help browser (yes, even when run externally).

Ultimately, C# may be the better language, but not by much. I can't help but look at Smalltalk and Scheme and think that these C-derivative language designers just don't get it. What I really want to see is a new generation of meta-languages that allow complex relationships and design patterns to be expressed at a high level in a compact fashion.

Re:objective analysis

[g4dget]

But in terms of pure technological merit, c# is a damn good language!

I'd say it's "decent", a modest improvement over Java.

It's very exciting to be able to build stuff using vs.net, and deploy on linux.

Yuck. VisualStudio is probably the main reason why Windows software sucks so badly: it lets people without a clue throw together software they have no business writing, and it makes on-going software maintenance and evolution unnecessarily hard even for people who know what they are doing. I very much hope that the junk coming out of VS.net will continue to depend on Microsoft proprietary libraries and will not make it to the Linux platform.

Re:objective analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell do you enthuse about functional languages (ocaml, scheme above?) You can't polish a turd.

Re:objective analysis

[sql*kitten]

automatic boxing/unboxing of primitive types [e.g., an int can be cast to an object]

Not only that but a common C mistake won't compile in C#:

if (a = 5) {
doStuff();
}

Re:objective analysis

[galacticdruid]

Right - I agree a lot of crappy programmers make horrible spaghetti code w/ visual studio. The cool thing about it is that it lets good programmers do stuff faster. Keep in mind I'm not a big M$ fan or anything - I actually did my best to avoid using their tools for philosophical reasons. I've just found I can do stuff a lot faster w/ their tools. I still like perl, but it takes me longer to debug it and it doesn't run as fast as c#. My big problem w/ M$ languages and platforms was that you had to host on a M$ server, which is crap. That's why I like the idea of having .NET work on linux. You made a really good point w/ this comment.

Corporate workplace

[chunkwhite86]

This is an excellent step forward for Linux on the Desktop. As Corporations begin to adopt the Microsoft .NET servers (for better or for worse), Linux desktop clients will be able to participate, and not be left out in the cold.

Congratulations to the development team on their achievement.

Re:Corporate workplace

[chickenwing]

How do statements of the obvious get moderated up? sometimes i think, lets see if anything has any useful info to share in the comments section, and then all I find is a bunch of crap

title confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Portable.NET partially non-free before or something?

Re:title confusing

[absurdhero]

before, the portable.net libraries had to be compiled using a certain proprietary C# compiler. Now, pnet can compile them by itself. So it is completely independant of proprietary software making it 100% free.

one thing to remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that this is free as in beer, not as in speech. .NET will never be able to be as free as Java, simply because it was originally developed proprietarily by Microsoft.

Sure, some people argue that Sun did the same thing with Java, pushing other companies to obey their demands through lawsuits. But the real reason, as McNealy explained in his book, is that they wanted to keep the language pure, and avoid the Microsoft-esque bastardization that would surely occur.

So take any "100% free" label of .NET with a grain of salt.

Re:one thing to remember

[rastopop]

What happens when Bill Gates writes a book and mentions that the reason for which C# isn't free-as-in-speech is that he wanted to keep the language pure?

Do you really believe *any* of these guys? Neither M$ nor $un are in it to help people out. These companies exist to do what big American companies exist to do: Make big money. If some modifications to Java somehow made $un the wealthiest company in the universe, I don't think Scott McNealy would complain too much.

But, that didn't happen, so MS is the "bad guy".

Someone care to explain...

[zaffir]

the compiling the compiler problem and solution?

Re:Someone care to explain...

[k2enemy]

Someone care to explain the compiling the compiler problem and solution?

when you're writing a compiler for language x using language x, how do you compile the compiler? the first compiler for a language has to be written in some other language.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Gopal.V]

The Ximaain guys have written their C# compiler in C# ... So their code needed MS CSC to start out ... Now it just needs a working copy of the compiler to compile the compiler ....
gcc worked the same way ... but everyone now has the gcc .. so it's not a problem .... All very confusing

AND Pnet needs none of that !

Re:Someone care to explain...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

It essentially means they wrote the compiler in C, and didn't write the compiler in C#, just to paint themselves in the corner and have a chicken and egg problem on how to compile a compiler written in C# if you don't have a C# compiler. I thought this was kind of odd myself, seems like a pat on the back for not doing something stupid, unless someone could point me to some need to compile a compiler in it's native language.

gcc itself has a bootstrap problem. The gcc code itself is actually pretty gcc specific, non-standard C code that can't be directly compiled correctly by other compilers. So there's an extra step, the gcc build routne adds a bootstrap compiler - youdon't compile the real compiler directly, you compile a small 'gcc-ish' compiler that though not complete, has a sufficent enough subset of gcc-isms to compile the real compiler.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[mindstrm]

If you are writing a C compiler in C, how do you compile it in the first place?

Traditionally, you compile by hand, which produces crappy but working code.. then you use the resulting compiler to re-compile, yielding clean code.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Profit!

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing about C#, but still a good related read. Reflections on Trusting Trust

Re:Someone care to explain...

[jacquesm]

real programmers write their first compiler in assembly of course...

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the assembler is of course written in machine code, which is written with a hex editor, which was written in...?

The first compiler was a hardware compiler?

Re:Someone care to explain...

[jacquesm]

I thought that traditionally you run your compiler on some other box that already has a 'c' compiler (and compile your libraries there too), then link and pop over the binary and off you go.

The first c compilers were written on a pdp-11 by K&R in a language called 'B', hence it's called 'C'

Re:Someone care to explain...

[jacquesm]

one more addendum to that, if you can get your hands on a bbc micro emulator (or the real thing if they are still around) and get the BCPL rom, that's as close as you'll get to running 'B'.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[mishac]

Real programmers write their firs compiler in straight machine-code, using a balloon, a carpet, and a copper wire to generate the 0s and 1s with static electricity.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[jacquesm]

there is a thing called hand assembly, it's been a while, but in the 6502 days if you couldn't afford an assembler you coded your stuff from the opcode book (KIM 1 comes to mind). It's pretty hard and one mistake and you wipe out your whole program so you'll have to key it in all over again. Especially branch computation sucks.

Lucky you if you have the tape interface :)

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the Mono compiler 'mcs' is written in C# and suffers from this 'stupid' move.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Khalid]

This a classic bootstraping problem, you have plenty of them in computer science. Conceptually it's exactly like recursive fucntions

f(n) = n*f(n-1) if n > 0
f(0) = 1,

you describe the function f for (n) in a simpler (n-1) version of itself.

Saying that a compiler is written in itself is misleading, in fact it's written in a simplified version, but powerfull enough to letwrite the first version of the compiler.

For a compiler n usually is 3.

Hence here how the first C compiler has been written.

f(0) was the the initial version, (a subset of C) and if my memory serves me well has been written in Fortran and of course compiled with Fortran to produce the first binary.

f(1) which can compile the complete C syntax has then been writen but in the C subset which f(0) understands, to produce the first complete C compiler.

Last but not least f(2) the final compiler has been rewriten or extended using all the C syntax of f(1) and then compiled with f(1) to produce the final compiler.

And here you are, you process has converged, now if you want to make new enhancements to the compiler, you can use the previous comiler and the syntax it understands (minus the new enhancements)

Re:Someone care to explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

which was written in...?

s/in.../by flipping switches on the front panel, or by wiring plugboards with cables.

Re:Someone care to explain...

[mindstrm]

What if it's a new platform with a new machine code? Someone has to bootstrap it.

Yes, these days you cross compile.. of course.. but that's what they were talking about...

Its called

[Anonymous Coward]

gnu/linux.net

What springs to mind is

[nagora]

who the fuck cares? Imitating MS when you should be beating them is a waste of time.

TWW

Re:What springs to mind is

[Jugalator]

Imitating MS when you should be beating them is a waste of time.

More often than not, imitating others is a way of beating them. I guide you to Microsoft if you need someone with better experience in this area. ;-)

Re:What springs to mind is

[Vann_v2]

The best way to beat an enemy is to learn from them. I can see you haven't done that with MS.

Re:What springs to mind is

[fferreres]

The sum of the alternatives makes you better. If you have everything + more, you are better. If you have your own strength but none of your competitors strength, you are not just better in the usualy sense.

Having a .NET implementation doesn't take options away from you and people can do whatever they like with their time, so if they offer one more option, i don't see the problem.

We all wish .NET was "owned" by somebody else, so that there would be no fears of a danger of trusting that technology (patent and IP wise), that's the only danger i see.

Re:What springs to mind is

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations, you win the "Most Stupid Comment Posted" award for this story

Re:What springs to mind is

[nagora]

The best way to beat an enemy is to learn from them. I can see you haven't done that with MS.

I have. I have learnt that allowing Microsoft to set "standards" is like walking up to a tiger with a plate of raw meat and thinking that it won't eat you too.

TWW

CIL CLI ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)

Re:CIL CLI ?

[Sam Ruby]

CIL = Common Intermediate Language. You will often see the term MSIL used instead. For that matter, MS refers to their implementation of the CLI as the CLR (Common Language Runtime).

MSCOREE and MSCORLIB is actually part of the ECMA standard.

Re:CIL CLI ?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

I am the CLI commander!

graspee

Interesting.

[murat]

It would be nice if they could use the portable.net domain. C# is really good, BTW.

Never thought this day would come

[ekrout]

The C programming language does everything I need it to do.

Writing a new operating system? I choose C.

Coding up your own desktop environment? I choose C.

Desire to write the next award-winning PC game? I choose C.

I'm not sure why so many man months were spent trying to hook into .NET. Couldn't we have spent more time refining the applications, utilities, and system code that we already have rather than wasting time extending the Microsoft monopoly?

Sorry, but you people really confuse me sometimes. I write a few sentences of praise for Microsoft's latest operating systems just a few hours ago and I get marked as a troll. Now I see an article praising those who work hard to let Microsoft's .NET succeed.

People: Make up your mind, or find a new hobby. people.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[J. J. Ramsey]

"I'm not sure why so many man months were spent trying to hook into .NET. Couldn't we have spent more time refining the applications, utilities, and system code that we already have rather than wasting time extending the Microsoft monopoly?"

Alternative C# compilers have the potential to undermine rather than extend the MS monopoly, simply because they are an alternative source for a C# platform.

The real trick would be getting C# programmers in the habit of targeting just the ECMA standard rather than the standard + MS lock-in extensions.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[thebatlab]

Ok, the other guy was pretty harsh but here goes: > The C programming language does everything I need it to do. But you've gotta do a buttload of extra work to get it to do some of the things that C# can accomplish more easily. Remember, I'm not saying you *can't* do it. Just that it's easier with C#. Remoting, GUI apps (b/c of layout managers), making apps portable. > Writing a new operating system? I choose C. For now. Sooner or later....C# OS :) > Coding up your own desktop environment? I choose C. Um, sure...... ;) > Desire to write the next award-winning PC game? I choose C. C# may not have the libraries to deal with low-level graphics stuff right now (I could be wrong) but if it ever gets support for something like OpenGL, totally portable games. How does it get any better than that :) >I'm not sure why so many man months were spent trying to hook into .NET. Couldn't we have spent more time refining the applications, utilities, and system code that we already have rather than wasting time extending the Microsoft monopoly? What I heard was "blah, blah, Microsoft monopoly sucks, blah, blah". No, but seriously. This seems to be a legitimate attempt on their part to interconnect software systems. Hey, maybe they'll pull some fast trick....but what if they don't? > Sorry, but you people really confuse me sometimes. I write a few sentences of praise for Microsoft's latest operating systems just a few hours ago and I get marked as a troll. Now I see an article praising those who work hard to let Microsoft's .NET succeed. No objections on that one here. It happens all the time :) What's karma anyways? ;) > People: Make up your mind, or find a new hobby. people. Might be that they are praising this even though it's associated with Microsoft b/c they see the potential in it....... Just a thought.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[mindstrm]

Okay.

So you can write an app, and run it anywhere.
So you can either use a web browser as a display, or native windows, or gtk, because there is a translation layer.

Because C isn't object oriented.

Becuase if we hook into .net, all the new .net applications will just WORK IN *NIX.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[redfiche]

Yeah, you can do it all with C, but if you're building enterprise applications you can build them much faster with C#. I'm no M$ fan, but you can be very productive with this language. Being able to easily port the stuff to linux would be a major bonus.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[thebatlab]

Sorry about the lame formatting :( Hit Submit accidently instead of Preview

Ok, the other guy was pretty harsh but here goes:

> The C programming language does everything I need it to do.

But you've gotta do a buttload of extra work to get it to do some of the things that C# can accomplish more easily. Remember, I'm not saying you *can't* do it. Just that it's easier with C#. Remoting, GUI apps (b/c of layout managers), making apps portable.

> Writing a new operating system? I choose C. For now. Sooner or later....C# OS :)

> Coding up your own desktop environment? I choose C. Um, sure...... ;)

> Desire to write the next award-winning PC game? I choose C.

C# may not have the libraries to deal with low-level graphics stuff right now (I could be wrong) but if it ever gets support for something like OpenGL, totally portable games. How does it get any better than that :)

>I'm not sure why so many man months were spent trying to hook into .NET. Couldn't we have spent more time refining the applications, utilities, and system code that we already have rather than wasting time extending the Microsoft monopoly?

What I heard was "blah, blah, Microsoft monopoly sucks, blah, blah". No, but seriously. This seems to be a legitimate attempt on their part to interconnect software systems. Hey, maybe they'll pull some fast trick....but what if they don't?

> Sorry, but you people really confuse me sometimes. I write a few sentences of praise for Microsoft's latest operating systems just a few hours ago and I get marked as a troll. Now I see an article praising those who work hard to let Microsoft's .NET succeed.

No objections on that one here. It happens all the time :) What's karma anyways? ;)

> People: Make up your mind, or find a new hobby. people.

Might be that they are praising this even though it's associated with Microsoft b/c they see the potential in it....... Just a thought.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Libor Vanek]

Writing new IS? I choose PHP ;-) And now maybe I'll check C#.

But only place where C sucks is in string operations ;-) (in my opinion as a PHP mainly coder ;-)))

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

I like C too. However, if I didn't use Java and Perl, I would never finish any programs. All the things you said could be said about ALGOL and assembler too.

Java is annoying and centrally controlled. C# is an open standard, which Microsoft did only to out-do Sun and Java, but whatever the case, I like it better than Java.

So I'd rather program in C# compiled to native code than C compiled to native code. True, using the portable runtime might give Microsoft power over your business in the future, but it's still interesting from an academic point of view. Just like Microsoft looked at the JVM and stole the best ideas, we can do the same with Microsoft.

As for the apparent confusion over why people criticize Windows (a microsoft product) and praise Portable.NET (a 100% free software product), well, duh, they are different products by different people.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[the eric conspiracy]

Becuase if we hook into .net, all the new .net applications will just WORK IN *NIX.

No way that Microsoft is going to let THAT happen.

MS .Net has a lot more to it in proprietary libraries; stuff that is guarded by patents and DCMA protected protocols that will prevent application portability. MS is already making moves to make things difficult for Wine and Samba with their NDA agreements on SMB specs.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[fferreres]

Now I see an article praising those who work hard to let Microsoft's .NET succeed.

1) The language and the technology may be good.
2) Creates more choice for the programmer.
3) Will have support (from Microsoft, so companies will demand it)
4) Will be known to many developers, that will expect C# support. Probably, you couldn't care less, but let's not forget some Windows apps are most desired under Linux or any os.
5) Nobody is talking about taking away options
6) .NET has a nicelely laid out set of classes, though you may not like it, some people are really productive with them

The things that I don't like are the suit fear, or bad moves that Microsoft may have in mind to leverage they IP on their .NET or kids learning C# in college as "the language".

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Dark Lord Seth]

Sweet jesus, someone teach this person how to troll. I've seen sharper insults on IRC made by 15 year olds.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[psxndc]

Actually most games are written in C++.

One thing you didn't mention though is Web Applications which, though you may argue are no big deal, I would argue at least a 10-15% of the development going on centers around. A super set of that is B2B applications which probably account for 25-33% of the development going on. C # and Java are way better suited for web development and B2B development and have established frameworks to springboard from.

I understand about your frustrations with the fickleness of the /. crowd, but the excitement here is the choice to _not_ extend the monopoly. By creating a C# compiler, libraries, etc Portable.NET and Mono are allowing developers to not use Microsoft tools or Microsoft OS's to generate useful code. Yes MS created C#, but you don't have to use anything MS owned or controlled to use it. If it doesn't exist already, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an apache mod_aspx/C# in the works. People assume that because MS created it, it has to be bad and unusable by the OSS crowd. It's really not the case...

now to quote a reply I've seen to a comment like yours before:

Why do I need C, I can use assembly.
Why do I need assembly, I can just type in 1's and 0's.
etc :-)

psxndc

Re:Never thought this day would come

[CoolVibe]

No objections on that one here. It happens all the time :) What's karma anyways? ;)

Karma is, unlike what Taco wants you to believe, directly proportional to the size of your virtual dick.

(Yes, this is a feeble but hopefully successful attempt at humor)

Re:Never thought this day would come

[fferreres]

Alternative C# compilers have the potential to undermine rather than extend the MS monopoly

Didn't Microsoft itself provided a reference implementation that would work perfectly under BSD? What, they are shooting themselves in their feet?

It's crystal clear they want it embraced by other Operating Systems, but I don't really know why yet. But our pockets will sure find out sooner or later, as well as everyone else's pockets.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[CoolVibe]

I can also be productive in Java, Python, Perl, Eiffel or Smalltalk. What makes C# so special?

I though the whole point of .NET was that the language didn't matter? As long as you have a backend that produces .NET bytecode, you are already in buissness.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[daveball]

I think the point being made is that by supporting C# and the .net development environment, you give credability to those "products".

I won't try to argue whether they would suceed or not without this extra help, but might it not be better to convince people to use java over c#?

C# succeding means MS still has oportunities to extend beyond the published specs. Sun has already shown that they won't tolerate that with Java.

Surely the future accesibility of the dev environment is safer under suns controll than evul M$????

Re:Never thought this day would come

[overbored]

You're right, C is a fast and portable language. However, C hands the tedious job of memory management over to the programmer. Not all of us are as proficient at avoiding or debugging memory leaks as you. Most of us would rather spend our time productively coding the program. .NET provides automatic memory management, and is still impressively fast.

Also, C code requires the maintenance of multiple versions of your application - at least for applications that have a GUI. .NET's very nice hierarchy of classes also stands out in this regard (System.Windows.Forms).

Moreover, OOP is big; C is not an object-oriented language, and C++ is, for many, a convoluted nightmare. When you're building truly portable (no rebuilding necessary) enterprising applications, .NET will be a major boon.

Don't be blinded by your hostility toward Microsoft. After all, these projects help undermine the dominance of Windows by providing an alternative platform on which to run your programs. .NET could be a great thing to happen to Linux.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[redfiche]

C# is java, with M$ extensions. So if the code will be running on Wintel box, you can probably be more productive with C#, because it was designed for that.

As far as language doesn't matter, that's true as far as it goes, but I don't think you can do the windows forms in java, and that's part of the productivity.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[magnum3065]

OpenGL has been supported for a long time now: http://csgl.sourceforge.net/

In fact most any existing library can be easily used within C# since it is very easy to import functions from DLLs.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[gh]

C# is java, with M$ extensions

Ignorance is bliss, eh?

C# has more in common with C++ than Java. The main similarities with Java relate to a simpler syntactical structure than C++, garbage collection, and an intermediate bytecode. Actual language features are borrowed more from C++.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[thebatlab]

Yup, that's exactly the point as I understand it. I think in all the furious posting, people forgot C# != .NET ;)

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

>Now I see an article praising those who work
>hard to let Microsoft's .NET succeed.

You use this logic, and yet you choose C?

Gee, at one point AT&T was a mega-huge monopoly, which pissed off alot of people. Hell, comedy based on AT&T's monopoly is still funny today...

Guess who funded C?

Yet, because it was handed over eventually to a standards body, boom anyone could implement a version of C, and remain reasonably compatible with other vendors.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[nzhavok]

The C programming language does everything I need it to do.

I too once was a C zealot. Then I had a job at Compaq which required me to develop in TCL which I hated at first, but eventually it opened my eyes a lot.

These days I do 90% of my work in python, it's a bloody great language. I remember when I first started hacking C about a decade ago, I'd pump out these little programs quite quickly but anything large took a lot of time, usually debugging. I never got tierd of C but I suppose when I started programming professionally it lost a lot of its appeal.

Anyway, I diverge.

Python lets me create complex systems very fast. The first time I used python I worte a client/server chat program, it took about half a day to do (including the basic python tutorial). I find I don't have the time to fuck around with C anymore, I don't find the joy in hunting down bugs either (at least I hunt less in python).

I still use C on occasion though. But only then I can't do it fast enough in python, the C code is still usually ran from python in the end.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual language features are borrowed more from C++.

And many of Java's "actual language features" were borrowed from C++. Exceptions, inheritance, virtual functions, constructors, method overloading, declarations allowed anywhere, primitive built-in types, and, of course, the syntax.

Why do people care about "where" a language derives from? Change is good, but there is no need to have radical departures everytime a language is created.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what you wrote was a fucking troll, and it got rated as such. As much as you'd like to believe yourself some sort of a mastermind, people can see you for what you really are.

Perhaps, rather than suggesting that the Slashdot community (that's right, community..making -your- kind the odd ones out that tend to try and destroy communities), you could just shut your fucking troll mouth and go back to posting plagiarized updates on your shitty, self-indulgent website. No one will miss you.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Phroggy]

Alternative C# compilers have the potential to undermine rather than extend the MS monopoly, simply because they are an alternative source for a C# platform.

Precisely the way Samba has helped to undermine Microsoft's monopoly, by allowing IT guys to move their file servers to Linux while maintaining compatibility with existing workstations and desktop applications.

A lot of people write VBScript and ASP, and these people will be moving to C# because it's where Microsoft is leading them and they follow like sheep. If their C# applications run just as well on another platform, that's one less reason to stay on Windows.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Waffle Iron]

The C programming language does everything I need it to do.

Writing a new operating system? I choose C.

Coding up your own desktop environment? I choose C.

Desire to write the next award-winning PC game? I choose C.

You forgot:

Author the unchecked buffer that opens the remote root exploit that enables next blockbuster Internet worm? I choose C.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Temporal]

I have a very hard time coding in C. It's not that I don't know the language. I can write anything in C, and write it well. But it takes so much work! Writing C code which is clean, modular, reusable, robust, and maintainable is a pain, if not a flat out contradiction in terms. If forced to use C, I would basically end up emulating all of the features of C++ using macros and redundant code.

As a matter of fact, one of my favorite programming techniques is impossible in C. I like to use reference counted smart pointers to handle memory management automatically. However, in C, there is no way to automate that -- you would have to manually call some sort of functions which increment and decrement the reference count, which defeats most of the purpose.

If I were writing an operating system, I would probably choose C. But a desktop environment? A game? I've worked on my own game engine (see my homepage), and the thought of trying to do it all in C makes me cringe. You might not agree, but I think you just don't know what you are missing.

I am actually now designing my own programming language. In my language, I have been able to write an IRC-like client/server chat program in 161 lines of code, and it would perform better than any but the most thoughfully designed C programs. Sure, you could write it in C, but why? Why spend days writing and debugging something that would take hours in another language?

Woohoo, I'm all psyched up to work on my compiler now. Time for a coding binge! Thanks! :)

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

"The bottom line is: .NET is the ultimate hedge"

Well, yeah. The plan firmed up right after a federal judged ordered MS broken into an applicaiton company and an operating system company, and the power that be were ready to let the OS guys rot on the vine.

NET allows them to 'control the platform' without requiring them to sell a OS.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[elflord]

Didn't Microsoft itself provided a reference implementation that would work perfectly under BSD? What, they are shooting themselves in their feet?

The primary competitor to C# is java. Moves like standardisation, porting, etc are probably intended to raise the stature of C#, and make it look more like a serious standard language (like C or C++) and less like a proprietary Mickey-Mouse fad-language (like Visual Basic)

Re:Never thought this day would come

[psxndc]

Well I think credibility is earned. C# and VS are useful products. I personally have decried the evils that are MS products, but Visual Studio is a kick ass IDE that allows me to be productive when I have to write MS based code. As for Sun, they have had opportunities to advance the Java language and have balked at it because, regardless of what you may think, they still want to control it. Yes, the Java Community Process is good, and is a step in the right direction, but Sun still owns Java and ultimately controls Java's direction. Sun is little different from MS in the respect that if they could own the world, they would. Sun is "better" because their OS is Unix based and they are more "open" but make no mistake, they would have Solaris and Java on every desktop if they could.

psxndc

Re:Never thought this day would come

[fferreres]

Certainly makes a lot of sense!

Re:Never thought this day would come

[TheAncientHacker]

So does toggling in binary machine code by hand. That you can do what you want with it doesn't make it good, it only demonstrates a level of masochism that shouldn't be necessary forty years after better languages than C were available.

The universal adoption of C is a disaster that has crippled this industry more than any other event. It was a poor hack of a language when it came out and its evolution has only made it worse.

C# is a small step in the right direction but only a small step since it is so C-like in its design and constructs. Granted that was a necessary design choice to wean people who don't know better away but...

Re:Never thought this day would come

[master_p]

Amen, brother ekrout.

Come on, the guy is right: we don't need anything else than C, all we need is to get better at programming.

The only real programming language is C.

Someone above said "why do it in C, we could just do it in assembly, etc". This is a lame argument: the use of C over assembly gives a tremendous boost in productivity, but the use of C# over C does not give the same or greater boost. Think of the analogy between speed increase from 33 to 66 MHz and speed increase from 1024 to 1056 MHz: the former is an 100% increase, the latter is just a tiny increase in producivity.

"The real trick would be getting C# programmers in the habit of targeting just the ECMA standard rather than the standard + MS lock-in extension"

I think not. The real advantage of .Net is the proprietary Microsoft libraries that offer so much functionality.

"1) The language and the technology may be good."

What is a 'good' language? a good language is the one that achieves more with less.

"2) Creates more choice for the programmer."

Actually, more choice is worse for the programmer than less choice. It gets more confusing to have more choice.

"6) .NET has a nicelely laid out set of classes, though you may not like it, some people are really productive with them"

Someone said that the .NET classes have so many narrow-defined methods, that it is almost 100% certain that you find something that solves the programmatic problem, but not 100%, but 99%!!! The problem is that they are defined very narrowly.

"Python lets me create complex systems very fast. The first time I used python I worte a client/server chat program, it took about half a day to do (including the basic python tutorial). I find I don't have the time to fuck around with C anymore, I don't find the joy in hunting down bugs either (at least I hunt less in python)."

C can also be used to create complex systems very fast: you just have to lay out your functions nicely(i.e. design first, then code).
A C-based client server chat program can take me half an hour to code, and the Microsoft C samples have such an example that takes a few lines of code.
Of course if you don't free memory then they will be bugs. If you make sure you free memory, then you will not have bugs. It is as easy as that.

"As a matter of fact, one of my favorite programming techniques is impossible in C. I like to use reference counted smart pointers to handle memory management automatically. However, in C, there is no way to automate that -- you would have to manually call some sort of functions which increment and decrement the reference count, which defeats most of the purpose"

Why do you need to use reference counted smart pointers ? just wrap up what ever functionality you want in some C function, then test it and see if it works. For example, when some memory is freed, go through all relevant pointers and make them NULL!!!

"If I were writing an operating system, I would probably choose C. But a desktop environment? A game? I've worked on my own game engine (see my homepage), and the thought of trying to do it all in C makes me cringe. You might not agree, but I think you just don't know what you are missing."

What I have learned from C++ and Java is that they distract you from the task at hand: you give too much attention in the object model, encapsulation, inheritance, and other stuff, and you pay little attention to what is to actually be done.

Especially for C++, it does not make any difference if my data are private or public at the end: I can always write a binary-compatible class with all members public, and then assign the pointers manually and have the private data as public.

C, on the other hand, offers a possibility for real encapsulation: Just have an empty struct in the header which is casted to a known struct internally.

For example: /* external struct */
typedef struct {} *FOO; /* internal struct */
typedef struct _FOO {
int foo;
} _FOO; /* access macro */
#define _MK_FOO(F) ((_FOO)*F) /* using a FOO as a _FOO internally */
void DoSomething(FOO foo)
{
_MK_FOO(foo)->foo = 5;
}

Inheritance is not also very important: it is basically a double-edged sword, because for every little functionality that the derived class should have, the base class must have an interface for, making the base class a huge bloated thing. Although at some places inheritance is good, it is way overrated.

The basic problem between Object Orientation in computers and the use of objects in reality is that in reality you know before hand what is the object that you are dealing with, where as in computers all actions must go through the vtable.

It's not entirely bad, but it can be surely done with ease using the C language.

"I am actually now designing my own programming language. In my language, I have been able to write an IRC-like client/server chat program in 161 lines of code, and it would perform better than any but the most thoughfully designed C programs. Sure, you could write it in C, but why? Why spend days writing and debugging something that would take hours in another language?"

The problem is not with the language itself, its with the libraries available. For example, I can write a client/server chat program with Qt in 50 lines of code. What does that prove about C ? nothing. Qt is one of the best libraries, that is what is proved. I am sure that if your language had to implement all functionality (gui, communications, threading, etc) then it would not be 161 lines of code, it would be more like 161,000 lines of code!!!

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: If you can't handle memory management, get out of the programming buisiness.

Seriously, you're doing no one any good if you don't understand how a system works. You're just another monkey who can type.

Get out of the way, and let the big boys do their work, mmmkay?

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Anonymous Coward]

However, C hands the tedious job of memory management over to the programmer.

C gives me the ability to precisly control the enviroment my code is executing in? Oh, the horror!

I agree with the other reply; if you can't handle some simple memory managment, get out of the business.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Temporal]

Huh? Your arguments show a clear lack of understanding of OOP concepts. I really think you should learn how OOP works a little better before you write it off. I strongly recommend these books:

• Large Scale C++ Software Design by John Lakos (It's really more of an OOP in general book, not so C++-specific. This book changed the way I look at programming, and IMO it should be required reading for anyone who wants to call themselves a coder.)
  
• Design Patterns by Gamma et al.
  
• Effective C++ and More Effective C++ by Scott Meyers

Seriously, if you know how to use OOP, it will make you more productive while making your code cleaner, more modular, more reusable, more maintainable, and more robust.

I had a lengthy rebuttal to your post written, but it occured to me that there wasn't really much to argue, and I was just saying the same thing over and over. You didn't really point out any advantages of C. You only point out what you don't like about OOP. Most of the things you point out are common newbie complaints. Most of your arguments are just plain not true, and there's not much to argue. OOP is not something you can learn and understand overnight. It took me a few years of practice to become as good as I am at it, but now I can lay out object designs in my head and handle all the little details you complain about without any trouble at all. It's worth it, trust me.

And yes, OOP can be done in C, but as your little code sample clearly shows, it ends up looking pretty ugly, and it takes a lot of extra typing. Clean, concise code is important. If your code becomes unreadable and difficult to maintain, it will just be thrown out and rewritten eventually, wasting your time and the maintainer's. Besides, what do you gain out of all that extra work?

It's like that old saying... "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Yeah, you can use that hammer to pound in a screw, but it would probably be a good idea for you to learn how to use a screwdriver.

looks good

[Anonymous Coward]

I like C#. Java is too academic (3 lines just to loop through members of an enumerable object? Bleh.). C++ is just plain annoying. C# is quite usable.

And since it's an open ECMA standard, it's possible to use a Free implementation and remain 100% safe from Microsoft lawsuits. (You know, Microsoft had to beat Java's "openness" [why are you laughing?] by being even more open).

Now.. anybody wanna write a JIT or a native compiler for Mac OS X??? C'mon, I wanna write Cocoa apps in C#!!!!

Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap Mono

[J. J. Ramsey]

Since Mono is written in C#, it needs a C# compiler in order to be compiled, while Portable.NET is written in C, so it just needs a C compiler, like gcc, to be compiled. If Portable.NET gets good enough, maybe it could be used to bootstrap Mono instead of the Microsoft C# compiler.

Re:yay

[Phil Wilkins]

The Gnu Hipppies produce another cheap imitation of some other companies cheap imitation of some other companies hard work and research!

Re:yay

[danoaks15]

ur just as bad. Why does originality matter. They have every right to try and expand the platform. Do everyone and shut your freaking mouth.

C# is a nice language

[_Potter_PLNU_]

C# really is a great language. I learned it for my Independent Studies course that was emphasising on coding GUI applications. Very robust and well thought out language. Yes, Yes, I know blah blah blah M$ this and M$ that. But ya know what? I could give a flying crap about everyone's predisposition against Microsoft. At least it's better than writing GUI applications in VB.

Re:C# is a nice language

[Jugalator]

Very robust and well thought out language. Yes, Yes, I know blah blah blah M$ this and M$ that. But ya know what? I could give a flying crap about everyone's predisposition against Microsoft.

I'm not sure Microsoft should be thanked for the greatness of the C# language on it's own, which I'm sure most of us agree is the best thing of .NET -- not it's Windows-specific libraries.

Thank Anders Hejlsberg, chief architect of the C# language, instead.

While I'm on the topic...

Anders Hejlsberg interviewed about C# #1
Anders Hejlsberg interviewed about C# #2

Pretty interesting, where he discuss the design goals of C#, how satisfied he is with what C# became, etc.

Re:C# is a nice language

[redfiche]

Well, Hejlsberg works for M$, so yeah, I think M$ gets a lot of the credit. I know my company takes credit (and blame) for the code I write.

Re:C# is a nice language

[Jugalator]

Hehe.. Yeah, I guess I wasn't clear about what I meant with that post. What I meant with "I'm not sure Microsoft should get credit" is that I don't think the end result of C# would be what it became if Microsoft hadn't got their hands on one of the greatest language designers there are today. But I admit I should have said something more along the lines of "out of the C# design team, I think a lot of C#'s power depended on Hejlsberg's ability to give C/C++ developers a RAD language that is much more powerful than anything Microsoft has brought us before".

Re:C# is a nice language

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it must've been really hard to duplicate the JDK. As soon as I started reading about C# I could see what was coming, I really wish Microsoft would burn in hell.

Re:C# is a nice language

[IamTheRealMike]

Thank Anders Hejlsberg, chief architect of the C# language, instead.

It's interesting to compare his previous work (Delphi) work .NET

Delphi was and still is rightly praised for being incredibly kickass. Outside of indie Windows development, Pascal is a dead language, but there is a truly astonishing amount of code written in Object Pascal for Windows - even Microsoft have used it for some products.

So I found it interesting to do a comparison. He clearly took some ideas from it to integrate into C#. For instance language integrated properties are something I constantly wish that Java had. The "uses" clause became "using".

Anders pats himself on the back for using XML comment tags though. Big mistake IMHO, xml comments are one of the most irritating things about C#. The start and end tags serve no purpose except to make the file larger and harder to read. JavaDocs are more elegant and easier to write. Using XML in many cases is a good decision, but here it is not. But then there are some curious omissions. Delphi doesn't use an IDE that generates gobs of code for user interfaces, it uses binary resources that are reconstructed from data embedded in the EXE/DLL files at runtime by the class library. It's clean and elegant. But what does VS.NET use? IDE generated code of course.

I guess it's only realistic that most of the innovation in .NET comes from perhaps one or two people, while the rest merely reinvents what came before. After all, the reason that innovation (whatever that is) is so highly prized is that it's rare.

Re:C# is a nice language

[spongman]

But what does VS.NET use? IDE generated code of course.

Sure, but you don't have to see that code. In fact, the default is set so you don't see it, and in general you don't ever need to.

On the other hand source code is much more preferable to separate binary resources. Firstly it all in the same file, so your project management becomes much simpler. Secondly it's trivial to support source control systems (CVS, SourceSafe, etc...) - with binary resources it's hard to track incremental changes.

One of the features most requested for early versions of Visual Basic was to convert the form layout resources from binary into text and embed them in the form source file for exactly these reasons. And they did this, although you don't see the textual representation of the resources in the editor - they're hidden just as before (unless you explicitly want to see them). Microsoft didn't just do this because they thought it might piss you off, they did it because people asked them to, and it makes sense. Besides, it's not like it's 'gobs' of code, but even if it was, who cares?

Re:C# is a nice language

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually Delphi 6 switched to text for resources, which are compiled into binary when the program is built, so SCM systems work ok.

I don't like IDE generated code because it means you have to use that IDE to edit it - kind of tool lockin if you like.

OK, I'll give it a go...

[smcv]

Problem: if you write your C# compiler (let's call it csharpc) in C#, how do you compile csharpc itself? You can't use csharpc :-)

You have to use the Microsoft compiler (from Visual Studio .Net) to compile a version of csharpc which will run under the Windows C# interpreter, then somehow make csharpc output Linux native code (because it can't output .Net bytecode and expect that to run on Linux until there's something to compile the interpreter for Linux, and we don't have a Linux version of csharpc to do that with yet). That's messy, to say the least.

On the other hand, if you're DotGNU and write your C# compiler in C, you can use existing C compilers like gcc to compile csharpc. Once that's done you can write the interpreter and runtime libraries in C# if you like, since you now have a Linux copy of csharpc to compile them with.

(Replace Linux with your non-Windows OS of choice)

It'd seem sensible for Mono to use DotGNU's compiler to bootstrap stuff now it's working, although there are probably obscure reasons why they can't.

Re:OK, I'll give it a go...

[CableModemSniper]

I thouht mono already compiled Mono? I thought the story was on slashdot at one point, but I couldn't find the story.

.net is already here its called java

[Anonymous Coward]

Why rewrite all of the apis again from scratch from standard features to eventually enterprise apis. C# is like jdk 1.0.

Check out monolinux

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire monolinux operating environment and code-generation utilities are available at this link.

Freshmeatt posting out !

[Gopal.V]

The freshmeat links are out here it is Freshmeat Portable.Net

Get the release and report bugs if you can find !

PS: assigning them to me does not count as fun

Hmmmm

[the eric conspiracy]

I guess I have some rather severe misgivings about this - how useful is this going to be given the lack of the proprietary MS libraries that you are going to need to run real-world applications, or move code in a portable fashion from one machine to another?

It's nice to have something like a this in the free software regime from a technical perspective, but is it really ever going to be anything but a little sister to the Microsoft version? Won't that reality diminish the corporate view that Linux is really just a hacker's toy, and if you want the real thing get Windows?

Interoperability and portability are good, but interoperability really occurs at the protocol level, and portability requires libraries.
I can see this resulting in are misleading market claims from Microsoft saying things like Lookie Here C# code is portable just like Java code !!

One good thing that could come out of this is that it might force Sun to loosen it's grip on Java a bit so that we get more serious open JVM's etc.

Re:Hmmmm

[haggar]

Exactly correct, I agree with everything you said. I'm glad someone brought these points up.

However, I thought Java was quite a bit open already. How else did HP, IBM and Tower create their own JVMs for HP-UX, Linux, Windows etc?

Re:Hmmmm

[Gopal.V]

>> Microsoft saying things like Lookie Here C# code is portable just like Java code !!

They already built Rotor for that .... We're now
plain mean competition ....

Especially they cannot take new patents on this
coz we hold prior art as on today !!

When MS invented .NET, we have to replace it with
DotGNU to prevent MS from doing a "Run this
binary and trust us !" strategy

Re:Hmmmm

[drinkypoo]

The microsoft "embrace and consume" philosophy is a serious issue. As for the libraries though, if the API is published it should always be possible to create a workalike library. If it isn't, then we have the moral high ground over them and that WILL keep some people from using it. Everyone wants things to be "open source" these days, though many are still iffy on "free software". Er, I mean, almost everyone.

Re:Hmmmm

[Simon Kongshoj]

Given MS' track record and general sentiments towards open or free software, I seriously can't see how anyone can think they don't have some sort of plan to make life difficult for .NET on non-Windows platforms -- or, at least, an ulterior motive with .NET in general. Killing Java is certainly one, but I doubt it is the only motivation they have.

Perhaps I'm wearing tinfoil, but I can't help but think that Mono and DotGNU are somehow being played the fool by Microsoft.

Re:Hmmmm

[nzhavok]

If you want sun to put a magic sun approved stamp on your JVM or J2EE platforms you have to pay them a lot of cash to have them verify it. Obviously this prevents a problem for OS projects unless some patron comes along and drops the money for it.

Re:Hmmmm

[the eric conspiracy]

As for the libraries though, if the API is published it should always be possible to create a workalike library.

What if that functionality is patented or protected by the DCMA or involves some sort of DRM with keys supplied from a Microsoft server?

Re:Hmmmm

[the eric conspiracy]

Especially they cannot take new patents on this
coz we hold prior art as on today !!

No, I am sure that they have already filed on all the patents they think they can get! You don't think they would have released something without patenting as much of it as possible, do you?

And then what happens when .Net 2.0 comes out, eh? Or for that matter the handwrting/voice/alpha wave recognition expansion pack etc....

Re:Hmmmm

[g4dget]

I guess I have some rather severe misgivings about this - how useful is this going to be given the lack of the proprietary MS libraries that you are going to need to run real-world applications, or move code in a portable fashion from one machine to another?

Yes, it is. People have written lots of portable, useful code in ANSI C or ANSI C++, and those standard libraries are much more limited than the ECMA/ISO C# libraries. The ECMA/ISO C# libraries contain pretty much all the primitives you need in order to talk to the OS (I/O, networking, threads, processes, etc.). Almost all the other .NET libraries are fluff that is easily replaced by pure C# libraries. Besides, WORA is overrated. I really don't care whether it takes a little bit of hacking and conditionalization to move my code from Linux to Windows.

One good thing that could come out of this is that it might force Sun to loosen it's grip on Java a bit so that we get more serious open JVM's etc.

I used to think that, too. But now, I think the time for that has come and passed. Sun has missed the opportunity to create a Java standard, they have pissed off pretty much anybody willing to invest the time to build a third party JVM and runtime, and they have become stuck with a number of stupid technical decisions in the JVM.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

They signed a deal with Sun, hoping they wouldn't get sued like another major Java licencee did.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, WORA is overrated. I really don't care whether it takes a little bit of hacking and conditionalization to move my code from Linux to Windows.

At least c# gives you an actual pre-processor. Another reason why I consider java to be too "academic" for my tastes.

Re:Hmmmm

[alext]

And why would I care about that?

Yes, the folks doing Kaffe would like to have access to the Sun test suites, but lack of certification will not stop my application from running.

Re:Hmmmm

[nzhavok]

Well it's a matter of acceptance and CYA. *You* may not care if it isn't sun approved, however a lot of people will care and it will stop businesses from using it.

If I'm consulting for someone and they asked what JVM to use I wouldn't suggest one that's not Sun certified because when/if they fuck something up I don't want to take any flak for suggesting a non-certified JVM. It's the same situation with JBOSS, it's a free application server but when I was working at Compaq we wouldn't even suggest it to a client because it wasn't Sun approved (and of course the partnering with BEA).

Mysql runs my database, doesn't mean I'd recommend it to someone for critical data, same deal with the JVM.

Re:Hmmmm

[alext]

Certainly Sun occupies a preeminent position as a certifier of Java technologies, but other companies can offer the guarantees that businesses seek - IBM and BEA, for example.

For example, this Redhat press release covers the certification of the JRockit JVM on Redhat 8 by BEA. This is targeted at the corporate audience, and makes no mention of Sun - their role was one step removed in that they certified JRockit as a J2SE implementation.

Re:Hmmmm

[rplacd]

[...] how useful is this going to be given the lack of the proprietary MS libraries that you are going to need to run real-world applications, or move code in a a portable fashion from one machine to another?

I suppose Microsoft can work to prevent reimplementations of some of its libraries. They can simply call undocumented Win32 APIs in their classes (disclaimer: I haven't seen any evidence that they have or haven't done this).

I guess part of this depends on your definition of "real-world applications." There's still a lot of code out there that can be written portably using publicly available specs. I don't need Microsoft's libraries to write network servers or text/filesystem manipulation tools or send database queries; I can do that today and have my code work everywhere from my FreeBSD dev box to my co-workers' Windows boxes. Microsoft probably can't even hide the class specs -- that'd kill the .Net book market.

dih

[Anonymous Coward]

the whole point of .NET is so microsoft can rent you apps.

You'll never own software again just rent an account on a big .NET server somewhere and run everything remotely.

What a great future for free software.

This is actually good...

[shaitand]

It's good that gpl'd code is put out that obsolete's whatever microsoft comes up with, along with what all the commercial software companies come up with. All these things SHOULD be developed, so long as opensource can develope these things as well as new technologies this is and will continue to be a good thing.

As a new c# programmer...

[bnavarro]

...(and old-time programmer):

This is an interesing development. However: I wonder how useful this language is on non-windows platforms. Let me explain.

You see, I have just started a new job that is heavily leveraging the .NET framework to bring an enterprise-level solution to fruition as quickly as possible. I evaluated c#, and decided that the greatest advantage c# brings to the table is rapid development through dynamic ActiveX/COM objects. That is: even though this is a compiled language, you code in it as though it was an interpreted language with ActiveX hooks. You would load any ActiveX object with a statement like

X = new Object(params);

and then you can immediately reference it with statements like

Z = X.func(param);

If you haven't written JScript, VBScript, or WSHScript, you have no idea just how amazingly powerful this is. A database connection & query takes around 4 lines of code. I was able to master in-code LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, aka Active Directory on Windoze boxes) queries in less than one day, having never touched an LDAP server in my life prior to that.

Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM. Each programming language still has to be manually extended in some form or another to recognise new APIs -- headers for compiled languages (and remembering to link to the libraries), or worse, "extension agent" coding for dynamic languages like Perl and Python (assuming the API code is a binary shared library). And APIs are almost never identical accross multiple languages.

So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port, because it is heavily dependent on the COM/ActiveX objects to get the real work done. Unless the .GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc.

Is thes even feasible to do?

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM.

How about CORBA (with libORBit)?

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[rastopop]

If you are writing C# code that leverages the CLR, then your code *will* port (as long as you aren't doing anything with Winforms). If you're coding against ActiveX components from within .NET, then you're kind of missing out on the rich framework provided by the CLR. For example, you mentioned ADO, XML, and the FSO. You really ought to be coding against ADO.NET, the System.XML namespace, and System.IO. If you do this, then your code should (eventually) port to other .NET implementations. COM interop/PInvoke is the stuff that will foul up your porting efforts...

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[jlanng]

Hang on, .Net is essentially a replacement of COM! COM interop from C# is messy and feels like a hack at best

None of the functional areas you mention are actually ActiveX objects - they are in fact namespaces in the .Net framework. ADO (actually ADO.net is the replacement for ADO) is System.Data, DOM is System.Xml and the FSO (FileSystemObject) has been replaced by System.IO

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Kashif Shaikh]

"Unless the .GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc."

That's why I don't know why people are embracing .net for other non-windows platforms. If you need a language to be dependant on vendor specific libraries that are difficult to implement, is your language really portable? Now I admit I'm speaking out of my ass right now(I don't really know the specific libraries), but I hear the .net interfacing with Window systems will be difficult(from Mono).

Maybe someone could pull my head out of me ass, and tell me honestly why a developer would want to write a .net program in Linux.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[jlanng]

That's why I don't know why people are embracing .net for other non-windows platforms. If you need a language to be dependant on vendor specific libraries that are difficult to implement, is your language really portable?
The libraries aren't vendor specific as per the poster's claims - from what I can tell (been using them a few months now), they are all high-level and nicely abstract. (Only a programmer could like something just because it's abstract!)

Maybe someone could pull my head out of me ass, and tell me honestly why a developer would want to write a .net program in Linux.
It's a cohesive development platform (unlike Java IMHO - with its multiple libraries and slightly incompatible application servers). It isn't perfect, but for a lot of applications it is the least worst solution out there

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Ctrl-Z]

First of all, most of the topics you mentioned are being implemented as part of the .NET Framework class libraries.
ADO.NET is in System.Data
XML is in System.Xml
LDAP is an open standard that Microsoft does not own.

Developing these class libraries is part of the Mono project.

The language (C#) is not dependent on these vendor-specific libraries. It is quite easy to write code that will run on both Windows and Linux that does not involve any of them. Of course, it may not do what you want, but that's why Portable.NET/Mono/whoever is building the things they are.

It's not so much "why a developer would want to write a .net program in Linux" as "how does a developer make a .net program written in Windows run on Linux".

Just my 2 cents.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[tenchiken]

There are a lot of statements here that need correction.
First of all, cOM is on it's way out. It is being replaced by the new remoting and web services architecture. The new component arch works much better and is far easier to understand then the iUnknown interface in COM. COM+ services (most notable, transactions) are still being supported, and I have no doubt that Mono will do a great job implementing these.


Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM.

Not true. In fact, there is a COM implemented for UNIX called XPCOM. It's the foundation of Mozilla. In addition, COM itself is a copy of CORBA/IDL (the tools for Corba/IDL are fairly poor tho). Gnome uses CORBA, and KDE also uses a distributed object protocol. In additional, almost every language supports SOAP (including .NET) and Perl's .NET support is awesome.

So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port, because it is heavily dependent on the COM/ActiveX objects to get the real work done. Unless the .GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc.

It's a really good thing that .NET rewreites all of these, and MONO is writing all of them. ADO is replacd with the much more usefull ADO.net, DOM is boosted with XSL, XSD, X** (many other XML standards), System.Directory is also bein gimplemented. FSO is replaced by the much cleaner streaming interface. Mono is implementing all of these

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[tenchiken]

More to the point, the Mono project started using WineLib (not all of wine as some posts have suggested) to make sure that the System.Windows.Forms is completly compatable with the standard interface. Imagine, distributing a single binary on both Windows and Linux. That can only help linux. I am waiting for a System.Linux namespace to become available.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[f00zbll]

A database connection & query takes around 4 lines of code. I was able to master in-code LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, aka Active Directory on Windoze boxes) queries in less than one day, having never touched an LDAP server in my life prior to that.

Do we really want more unmaintainable code? Sure 4 lines of code speeds up proof of concepts, but in production code should be abstracted and well documented. What happened to .NET revolutionizing development and moving to n tier architecture. If you're sticking 4 lines of code into an ASPX page like the way people used to do ASP with vb, then it's not strictly n tier. It doesn't abstract business logic out into it's own tier. I fail to see how anyone can "master" LDAP in one day. There's a lot more LDAP protocol and specification than simply making a connection and getting data.

I've worked with C# a little and lately I'm more disappointed than anything. The language itself is solid and borrows good ideas from other languages, but the examples Microsoft distributes with the SDK have examples like this.

// Return the count this word
public int count { get { return count; } }

The question I keep asking is why is MS encouraging obfuscating coding practices? The only benefit I can see from coding this way is to lower the line count. Given that programmers are lazy and there's always bugs, why won't microsoft encourage good coding practices. The same method written in more lines with better comments would go a long way towards making code easier to maintain.

// Return the count of the word pass in the constructor or method X.
public int getCount() {

• return count;
  

}

I say this because a lot of the work I've done in the past was fixing bad/broken code. More often than not, it was ugly VB, JScript or Perl code that had bad formatting and had no comments. A a provider of technology to small and large business, MS should take the lead in encouraging programmers to write clean, well documented code. There's already enough spaghetti code in the world, we don't need more of it. My biased 2 cents.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Cyno]

Wow, that's nice. Almost like

use CGI;

my $webpage = new CGI;
$webpage->param('objects','are cool');

If only perl scripts could be compiled down to a staticly linked binary.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[g4dget]

Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM.

UNIX has had things like COM. But because in UNIX programmers have a choice and because COM sucks technically, most people ended up using other solutions.

Each programming language still has to be manually extended in some form or another to recognise new APIs

Each language has its own APIs for extension with native code. That is by choice. But, no, you don't need to manually create new interfaces for each language.

So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port,

Your Windows C++ code won't port to UNIX either. So what? Does that make C++ useless on Linux? I don't think so.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are already ruined by java. Move on.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM.

>Not true. ... XPCOM .. CORBA/IDL ... Gnome ... KDE .. SOAP

That's exactly the problem. Even with dotNET coming in, COM is universal on Windows and supported by pretty much every tool vendor. Unix never implemented anything like that.

Having 9 different component models is almost worse than having none at all.

Of course, history is about to repeat itself with Java. Mono, Portable.NET, Parrot ... (have fun using SOAP for local IPC :)

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[An Ominous Coward]

Once again, Borland Delphi provides the most elegant solution, which in this case is a fine blend of the two ideas.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The libraries aren't vendor specific as per the poster's claims"

Are you f-ing kidding? ADO.NET specifies your database vendor name right in the class names (SqlDataReader for MS-SQL, etc). This sets database access libraries back 20 years or more.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

"public int count { get { return count; } }"

It's a read-only property. Is that so wrong?

BTW, this is one of the "good ideas" they borrowed from another language (VB), that happens to be very popular among the target market for .NET. It was probably required on the IL level for technical reasons and put in C# for both technical and marketing reasons.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[f00zbll]

Once again, Borland Delphi provides the most elegant solution, which in this case is a fine blend of the two ideas.

Then why didn't the designer of C# do the same thing? Considering he was involved in designing Delphi? I was seriously hoping Microsoft had change it's ways in terms of programming practices and code samples. But I was stupidly optimistic, and should have known better. It's just another half-ass job. The only way I would consider C# for my primary development language is strong push for better programming practices, thorough documentation and better software design. Yeah right. That will never happen.

Re:As a new c# programmer...

[IamTheRealMike]

Not true. In fact, there is a COM implemented for UNIX called XPCOM. It's the foundation of Mozilla. In addition, COM itself is a copy of CORBA/IDL (the tools for Corba/IDL are fairly poor tho). Gnome uses CORBA, and KDE also uses a distributed object protocol. In additional, almost every language supports SOAP (including .NET) and Perl's .NET support is awesome.

The power of Windows COM comes from the fact that it's a) universal and b) capable of both inproc and outproc coding.

If I load up Delphi and write a ActiveX (com with extensions) object, it can then be used in any language easily. A bit more work and now it's available for automation by external processes that may or may not be local. The tools are there. It's universal.

An example. For the longest time, almost every Jabber client implemented on Windows used JabberCOM. Whether they were written in Delphi (the language jabbercom was written in), C++, Visual Basic or even JavaScript (check out RhymBox) they all used the same code. That stuff just doesn't happen on Linux. There are several competing component models, all of which suck.

CORBA sucks, it's great for outproc communications, but for inproc code it's awful. Miguel himself has admitted as such, and he was a prime CORBA advocate for many years. KDE doesn't really even have an equivalent, KParts is limited to inproc C++ and DCOP is just a simple RPC protocol. UNIX still lacks a decent object model. Windows has always had COM, and even though it's far from perfect, it was there.

Now MS are at it again, they are addressing the problems that made all these hacks necessary in the first place by standardising the in memory object layouts and ABIs. Once more, they are taking object technology to the next level. None of these ideas are innovative (COM was bought in), but they are setting standards and people use them, and all Windows developers benefit as a result. We need something like that for Linux, but so far all our attempts have failed. I'm still not sure whether to trust MS with .NET, but it's a good solution to the problem, and we need a solution. Bring it on I say.

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[Anonymous Coward]

mono is self hosting. meaning you can use it's own compiler to compile its self hence not needing any other compiler..

Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims Trap

[NZheretic]

Microsoft's CEOs have made it "patently" clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, such as United States Patent Application #20020059425 "Distributed computing services platform" which covers the design and inter-operation of .NET based implementations.Although there is prior art examples of individual technologies such as the JVM etc, Microsoft patents such as the one mentioned, define and claim the interoperation of the components, in such a way that any re-implementations will be sure to be covered by the patents. This remains true even for the Microsoft specs submited to standard

In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA. Sun mhas also fully opened up the Java development standards process under the new Java Community Process (JCP).

There those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET reimplementation represents a pending legal mindfield.

Re:yay

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate GNU hippies, many of whom are coincidentially named 'Rhys Weatherley,', don't have anything better to do. It's not a feat to copy someone else's software. It's like reading off of a design spec, please. Apparently, originality will never be under the GPL.

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it is a pain in the ass and it takes much longer. Have you tried keeping up to date with Mono from cvs? Compiling Mono from cvs has turned into a black art and there is no tried and true method that works every time. You often have to juggle the order in which you compile the runtime, libraries, compiler while considering which part you have to 'make install' and in which order. It is a nightmare for anyone who is not a Mono monkey ;)

C Compiler for DotGNU

[Gopal.V]

Hehe... We have a C compiler for DotGNU as well .. (just don't let the MS guys on our little secret ?)

hahahaha you got me

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn that was good.

Make me care

[Anonymous Coward]

Assume I'm some crotchety old-timer who's perfectly happy with the way things work now.

What does this give me that I don't have already?

Note: this same question applies no matter which OS I happen to use already.

Someone should patent ....

[fferreres]

"C$", at some point, someone is going to try to use it. Probably Microsoft. Or maybe they wanted to patent C$ but made a typo (they are next to each other). Or maybe it's just what they meant, but of course, they couldn't just go and name it C$, so they chosed the closest thing that looked right.

We know Microsoft choses names by methaphores or analogies, and never by pure luck or randomly.

Now the big question is what are the dangers of embaracing they IP that now looks "free" but may not be so in the future. I don't know, there must be something I am missing here.

Re:Someone should patent ....

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

C$ is the hidden administrative share of the C drive present on all NT kernel-based machines that have file sharing installed.

What about GUIs

[enos]

From what I understand, the only 'portable' stuff in .net can only have a CLI. Rotor (MS' 'shared source' implementation of .net that runs on windows/bsd) doesn't have winforms, and I don't know how far along Mono is at their implementation.

How about beating MS at their game and make a free, cross-platfom GUI environment for .net? Something to compete with winforms, but portable. Something compile compatible with Qt or GTK would be great.

I bet companies would rather target this because without much extra effort they have the same software running on Windows/*nix/Mac. We get full featured ports released at the same time as their windows counterparts.

We also get take some power away from MS, since the gui would be open.

Looks like Win/Win to me.

Re:What about GUIs

[Gopal.V]

QT# and GTK# work with Portable.Net ....

And we have our very own X11# (*ugh*) ...

Last but not least , we could create wx# ,
but I'd rather be hacking the compiler ;-)

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[J. J. Ramsey]

"mono is self hosting. meaning you can use it's own compiler to compile its self"

Yes, but somehow the *initial* Mono compiler had to be compiled, and to get that far MS's own C# compiler had to be used as a bootstrap compiler. After that initial compile, Mono no longer needs the MS compiler, but it had to be there originally to bootstrap.

algol

[Anonymous Coward]

more like the Gnu Hippies produce another cheap imitation of a language (java) thats a spinoff of a language (c++) thats a spinoff of a language (c) and another language (smalltalk) which is a spinoff of a language (simula) packed into a language (algol) which is also the grandfather of that other language (c).

And they're implmenting it on a system (gnu/linux) which is a copycat implementation of a system (unix) which is based on another system of the same name (unix) which was inspired by another system (multics) which everyone says nice things about but which aint used much any more.

(I think I'll skip all the attributions from here down to keep from getting myself too confused.)

And that company which got rich by buying and marketing a disk program loader then eventually building a window system that imitated another window system and didn't do as well as yet another window system that were all eventually based on ideas from yet another window system that nobody uses any more.

Oh yah, and that company - it also made a pile of money by copying a spreadsheet from another company that made a spreadsheet based on a spreadsheet that nobody uses any more. And dont forget their word processor (if such it really is) that is copied from another word processor that is copied from another word processor that was easier to use but nowhere near as good as a text based word processor that pretty much NUAM.

OK. I'm tired now. I'll stop.

Kparts ... if KDE can do it , why not us ?

[Gopal.V]

IF KDE could embed ActiveX components , what's stopping us ? But well we lose the "Portable" part of OCX .. We cannot just run it in OS X or Solaris then..

ECMA should keep the DotGNU team safe

[Anonymous Coward]

After all Sun is in ECMA .... Though I cannot say the same about Mono or OCL who are doing the whole .NET thing .... (infringing patents maybe)..

Does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that we're all now supposed to be hoping .NET is actually a success, so that all this hard work doesn't go to waste?

Sometimes you can't even tell the players with a scorecard.

Is this language as fast as python ? java ?

[zymano]

Is this language as fast as python ? java ?

Re:Is this language as fast as python ? java ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java and Python are slow as fuck you diptard.

why .net for linux?

[eonblueye]

I use to strongly think/believe that Linux was THE alternative for Microsoft Windows. But all we have become is another emulation of it? I guess it's safe to say we are the no-fault stunt double and they never get fame or truly nobody knows they are. Shouldn't it be time for gnu, linux, et at; to produce and come up with their own standards? I just don't want to be a follower, I want the leadership position.

Re:why .net for linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

THe OSS community is building their own sards in this space -- see Parrot - the next generation VM from the good folks in the perl camp.

Re:Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims Tr

[drinkypoo]

So what's the appropriate prior art on .NET? I know they didn't come up with this shit entirely themselves. How much of it is from prior applications (COM/DCOM) and how much of it is ripped off from CORBA... Also how much of it is ripped off from Java?

To COM or not

[driehuis]

The bigger issue is not so much COM or not. For example, there's always XPCOM that was developed as part of Mozilla.

The Microsoft advantage is the Microsoft disadvantage: there is a single vendor to cast interfaces into concrete.

In practice, I'd expect the most sucessful interfaces to become available as interface libraries to UNIX tools (in your example, that OpenLDAP would come with a C# interface in much the same way that Perl interfaces are ubiquitous in UNIX).

Having a choice between "vendors" in the UNIX world has advantages and disadvantages too, but plumbing between libraries and a language is a small matter of programming. How well it can be implemented is dependent on two factors:
How well the C# interface is documented
How well the MS code is written

The latter may sound surprising, but experience shows that the hardest thing in emulating MS libs more often than not is getting the implementation bug for bug compatible.

My experience has been mostly with C libraries and Perl interfaces, and I've never lost too much time gluing stuff together. Making that glue code reusable is much harder, and is helped a lot if you have an interface specification available (Java did a lot of good work in that area, and rumor has it C# does a good job at it too).

Documentation of the interfaces is what the success in practice hinges on.

Maslow, hammers and nails.

[rjh]

"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." -- Abraham Maslow

If you think C is the talismanic ne plus ultra of programming, I really think you need to get out more. Learn C++ and the STL; see what processor-intensive stuff you can do trivially with it. Learn LISP and grok the lambda calculus and the beauty of functional programming. Learn Python and Perl and see the coolness of executable pseudocode.

If the only language you let yourself use is C, then you're limiting yourself in ways which aren't good for either your mind or your career. C is a good tool and one that ought to be in every hacker's toolbox--but just like you can't be an effective carpenter if all you have is a hammer, you aren't going to be an effective hacker if you keep on swinging C at problems which call for LISP, Smalltalk or SPARK solutions.

Limits?

[AirLace]

I'd conjecture that Mono's commercial nature doesn't limit community participation any more than DotGNU's particular political holdups. In fact, I'd go so far as to say Mono is more open. It has many signs of a very healthy open source/free software project which DotGNU lacks, like localised groups of developers (mono-es) and active involvement with multimedia and GUI projects, dozens of active contributors and in this case a healthy followership in the Windows world. I've yet to hear of patches to Mono being rejected because of Ximian.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this get a score of 4? .NET will always be faster than Java on Intel because of endianness issues? There are so many other factors affecting performance that endianness issues don't even come up unless you are writing a streaming video codec or something. Why does this author hate java so much? .NET is not so different from Java in many ways. Java is great stuff.

Re:What?

[0x0d0a]

True.

The big Java nasties are bounds checking and runtime type checking combined with casts being required when working with generic container objects (the container objects gripe comes directly from a lecture by Harper, one of the ML language designers, who knows what he's talking about).

Oh, and heap-allocating local variables sucks down cycles as well. That gets awfully expensive if you're calling functions over and over...

I'm not sure I agree that Java is "great stuff". Java has a few awfully nice features. *Good* networking support. It's crossplatform. It prints out stack traces if it dies, and really good threading support.

However, Java is annoyingly slow.

The problem is that the primary alternative is, well, Microsoft.

I'd kill for a good third alternative.

Eiffel isn't that popular. Same for Objective C (though I expect OS X has helped that a bit). Ada and Pascal are rarely used any more, and C/C++ are both too low-level. ML is functional.Lisp and Scheme are both functional and lack static typing. Most of the other "alternatives" are even lower performance (Ruby, perl...) and not really designed for large-scale application development.

The main improvements I'd like to see are:

* Speed. No-compromises speed. If you have to do runtime overhead at all, you had better have a damn good reason to do it. C and C++ do this right. SML is safe *and* manages to do this. I suppose I can live with bounds checking, a la eiffel and Java. But no more (maybe pay-as-you-go RTTI like C++). The language should be designed around maximizing speed -- it's terribly hard for a compiler to do much with C or C++ because they don't know what a pointer might be pointing to, and cross-function optimization is almost impossible.
* Threading support standard. One of the best points in Java.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good threading support compared to what?
Not sure about speed. There have been written networking sofware which wins over similar written in C performance and scalability-wise. See Matt Welsh's (spelling?) work.

Why should a language be designed around maximizing speed? There are other design goals than speed which are much higher in priority to me. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Beautiful and slow is better than ugly or broken and fast.

Java's threading support sucks - it depends on pthreads.

Your first alternative is Erlang, compare the features of Erlang to the features of Java. Both are byte-compiled, oh but what advantages does Erlang have! www.erlang.org

Re:What?

[jlar]

The big Java nasties are bounds checking and...

If speed is what you need - IBM has proposed some relaxations in the JVM from e.g. bounds checking. I don't know if and when this will be implemented.

Re:What?

[0x0d0a]

Good threading support compared to what?

C, C++, Ada, perl, I dunno, what are you looking for?

Why should a language be designed around maximizing speed?

Because when you design a language, you are setting performance absolutes. A program *cannot* run faster than whatever your language is limiting it to. No hacks or tricks later on can avoid this limitation.

Far less bad is missing functionality, or even imperfect APIs. You can introduce new APIs. You can add new libraries. If the language's native API is too raw for you, you can slap a layer of software on top of it (as much C++ code does with C APIs).

However, there is no way to "fix" bad performance at the language level.

That being said, there are some times that peformance just isn't a big deal. That's okay. The problem is that *everyone* has taken this approach -- there isn't just one or two rapid development languages. Modern, *fast* languages are almost nonexistent (the closest things were the ones I posted above...eiffel and ML).

And everyone says that Moore's law makes performance unnecessary. Fine, but people *upgrade* to a computer that's two or four times as fast. And it's pretty easy, once you throw out the goal of maximizing speed in your language, to lose a factor of two, then four, then ten.

How many apps that are running on your desktop at this minute are in Java? Ten? Five? For me and most others, it's zero. Because Java sucks down RAM and CPU time. It *works*, yes, but it's much slower than a C equivalent is. So there are lots of Java programs, but software that actually gets used is usually written in C or C++. Not because these languages are somehow magically better, but because they have far less overhead. Java has its place, but it's not competitive as a horizontal-market application language.

There are other design goals than speed which are much higher in priority to me.

But those can always be added later. You're setting a bound on the *fastest* an application can run when you design your language. Any tradeoffs you make then impact a horde of developers and users.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

This saying, which certainly true, doesn't apply in this case. It's intended to refer to application development. It doesn't say "optimization is bad", it says "optimization without testing -- premature optimization -- is bad". Java has been well tested, and it has a handful of nasty bottlenecks that are well known. You're saying that "optimization is the root of all evil.", which I don't agree with at all.

Beautiful and slow is better than ugly or broken and fast.

In theory, yes.

However, we're talking about a language here, not an application.

C is not broken, though it could be said that it's ugly. Yet most horizontal-market apps are written in C or C++, despite this ugliness. Users *value* performance.

Java's threading support sucks -- it depends on pthreads

[double take] What? That doesn't make sense -- no it doesn't.

Your first alternative is Erlang
Umm...Erlang is possibly the slowest major language out there. It's far slower than Java. Look at the The Great Computer Language Shootout.

Re:What?

[dmelomed]

So you're one of those from the "broad generalization" camps. Just because a language is slow at particular micro-benchmarks such as the link you provided, doesn't mean it's "the slowest major language out there". Statements like these are broad generalizations, religious nonsense.

Erlang's threading doesn't depend on an OS library - pthreads. An Erlang thread looks like a process to an Erlang programmer - which makes thread programming look like multi-process programming with inter-process-communication - easy. Java doesn't even come close. In Erlang, concurrency is a language _feature_. In Java it's an alien invader _bolt-on_ with all the resulting inconveniences and OS-dependence. Same goes for Ada - concurrency is a language feature, not a bolt-on. Also an Erlang process is said to be orders of magnitutde lighter than Java thread. Read the site, would you. Erlang applications scale well with thousands of threads without the overhead of programming pthreads. Erlang was designed such that each concurrent process in a given problem can be mapped to a concurrent process in Erlang language. It's a feature, not a bolt-on.

"Modern *fast* languages are almost nonexistent" -
another broad generalization. How fast and how fast for solving which problems? Java has been used to write a scalable application framework which has been used to write a web server which scales better than an equivalent C-based server. See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mdw/proj/seda/. Your broad generalization that Java is slow in any case, any kind of application, anywhere (just because you have this idea in your head), falls flat on its face. "Profile, don't speculate".

I am not a big Java fan, but your broad generalizations cannot be further from the truth. The rest, are even more ridiculous.

"But those can be added later" - you have it backwards. Don't confuse language with a langugage implementation. If you sacrificed language features to speed - like it has been done with C, chances are they will never be added to a langugage later. And with C they weren't. Be it in standard or an extention form. On the other hand, if a language _implementation_ suffers from performance problems, they can always be dealt with later; changing a language standard would be much more painful and inconvenient for everyone.
Case in point C's string functions are not only ugly but broken. Buffer overflows. If language designers wanted to extend the language with new string functions that allocated memory - how easy of a change would that be? If on the other hand, one of the C implementations - GCC per se was suffering from performance probelms in the string functions (if were designed correctly in the language in the first place), they can be fixed without changing language standards.

Premature optimizations in language design, or application design are equally evil. Unfortunately, you have your "fast" blinders on and can't see it. You're already prematurely optimizing your imaginative, "nonexistent" languages in your head. It's okay. There will be time when you'll realize it's all about trade-offs, and speed is secondary to other goals of language design. Otherwise we'd all be writing machine code now. Furthermore, the resulting product written in "slower" language may very well be just as good performance-wise when it's done compared to an equivalent written in your "faster" lanaguage. Except your faster language will probably result in more bugs, more time-to-market, more complexity, and more people overhead because it wasn't suitable for solving the problem at hand in the first place. Best tool for the job, not fastest tool for the job. "Profile, don't speculate" comes to mind again.

That being said, your first alternative to Java is may still be Erlang for many types of problems. Such as distributed applications, scalable Internet servers, and of course soft-real-time telecom software. Erlang has concurrency, fault-resiliency and distribution built-in as language features, not bolt-ons. Java has far less to offer _for the same types of applications_. Same is true of C. C is a much better language for compression than Java for example for obvious reasons, and vice/versa. To summarize: there are applications in which any of these languages are more suitable than others. Broad generalizations such as "it's slow for any application" do not apply.

Re:What?

[0x0d0a]

So you're from one of the "broad generalization" camps.

Oh, stereotype me, will you. :-)

[snip long passage about how Erlang concurrent programming is good]

Look, I don't have a problem with Erlang as a language. There are, I'm sure, lots of good applications for it. The problem is that I'm looking for a language that focuses on speed, which there is a decided paucity of recently. Despite all the compiler improvements and optimization techniques developed, the fastest choice around is generally *still* C and C++, the first of which is *decades* old, and the second of which has a lot of old baggage.

I want modern functionality with even *better* speed. That's all. Erlang is not what I'm looking for, but that doesn't mean it's not good for some people.

In Java [threads are] an alien invader _bolt-on_ with all the resulting invonveniences and OS-dependence.

I wouldn't call Java's support bolted on. It's language level as well.

Erlang applications scale well with thousands of threads

That's nice (I was quite impressed with CML, which has similar capabilities), but it doesn't really help me unless I'm dead set on writing a program with thousands of preemptive threads.

How fast and how fast for solving which problems

Horizontal market, end user stuff like the desktop programs I mentioned. A web browser. A word processor. A photo manipulation program. A vector graphics program.

Java has been used to write a scalable application framework which has been used to write a web server which scales better than an equivalent C-based server. See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mdw/proj/seda/

Your link (well, what should have been a link) is dead. And scalability is mostly irrelevant. Sun sold lots of copies of Java on the "scalability" argument, but on the level you're talking about, it's not germane to my issues, if I'm writing something for a single node. I can make a scalable system too: T=1000yrs + 1 sec * N, as opposed to T=2 sec * N. Remember, Sun cares about selling hardware, preferably lots of hardware. The biggest draw of their product is that you can "trade up" easily. So they make a slow language that lets you "trade up" easily. And surprise, they push the language. Shocking! Java may be sexy for Sun's target market, true, but not for people like me.

Your broad generalization that Java is slow in any case, any kind of application, anywhere (just because you have this idea in your head), falls flat on its face.

Saying "Java is slow" has some quite obviously understood implications by both you and me, so don't play stupid. That doesn't win any arguments. Java may well be faster at...oh, I don't know, closing. For the vast majority of cases, if I want to sit down and write something that a user interacts with, a Java program is much more sluggish than a C++ program. This is not something that I'm the only one trumpeting -- anyone that's used Java has run into this. And don't give me the "you're using a slow JVM" bullshit that Java advocates love to spout -- I've been developing exclusively with IBM's JDK. There isn't a faster JVM out there for Linux.

"Profile, don't speculate".

Okay. The Java software that I've used is, without exception, sucks down CPU cycles and RAM. Freenet is slow. The theorem-proving environment that Carnegie Mellon University uses for logic courses is slow. Another game-theory environment I've used is slow. Tube (a Java hotline client and library) is mind-bogglingly slow. Now, perhaps I just *happened* to run across every single slow Java application, and just *happened* to run across every single fastest C equivalent, but I don't believe it.

Don't confuse language with a language implementation. If you sacrificed language features to speed -- like it has been done with C, chances are they will never be added to a language later....if a language _implementation_ suffers from performance problems, they can always be dealt with later.

I have macros that both allocate, test for the proper allocation, and typecast the allocation of a struct in C. I use an excellent object-oriented C environment with glib and gtk. I have named constants. The C environment that I use today is far nicer than that three decades ago.

As for your claim that they can always be dealt with later in the implementation, I have an excellent counterexample -- the JVMs that you're so staunchly supporting. When Java was released, it ran like a dog. Sun promised that better compilers would improve things. Optimization got a little better. JITs helped. And you know what? Java is, indeed, faster than it once was. It is *still* sluggish, however. And it's not going to improve much more. And the *language* has limited this -- the lack of typed container objects, the required bounds checking, the almost-impossible-to-avoid reliance on heavy heap-based dynamic allocation of memory. No implementation can fix this. Java as a *language* is terminally limited to never run faster than at a certain clip. Now, it's still quite useful for many things, but not for performance-critical stuff, which happens to matter to me.

Case in point C's string functions are not only ugly...

I'll definitely agree with you there. ...but broken.

And I won't agree with you there.

If language designers wanted to extend the language with new string functions that allocated memory -- how easy of a change would that be?

Really, really easy. Look at glib for C or any one of many, many good string classes for C++.

Premature optimizations in language design, or application design are equally evil.

Are you unbelivably asinine? "Premature optimizations in language design"? How do you think someone is going to "prematurely optimize" a language spec? Do you want to wait until a language is widely used and *then* run out and make lots of changes to it? Heck, that isn't even relevant. I've been talking about existing languages, which are already well understood. There is no prematurity here at all. ...you'll realize it's all about trade-offs, and speed is secondary to other goals of language design.

And one day, *you* will realize that having a speedy language does not entail *losing* other functionality.

Except your faster language will probably result in more bugs, more time-to-market, more complexity, and more poeople overhead because it wasn't suitable for solving the problem at hand in the first place.

This is coming from the same person that just asked someone not to "generalize" about programming languages. How the hell did you reach the conclusion that speed entailed a lack of safety or an inability to do rapid application development?

Re:What?

[dmelomed]

"Oh, stereotype me, will you. :-)"

That's okay, I was one of them.

"Look, I don't have a problem with Erlang as a language. There are, I'm sure, lots of good applications for it."

You said it was one of the slowest languages, because some microbenchmark says so.

"The problem is that I'm looking for a language that focuses on speed, which there is a decided paucity of recently. Despite all the compiler improvements and optimization techniques developed, the fastest choice around is generally *still* C and C++, the first of which is *decades* old, and the second of which has a lot of old baggage."

Nah, your best bet are zeros and ones.

"I want modern functionality with even *better* speed. That's all. Erlang is not what I'm looking for, but that doesn't mean it's not good for some people."

Great, we both agree on this.

"I wouldn't call Java's support bolted on. It's language level as well."

Ah, ah, ah, it still depends on pthreads. pthreads isn't native.

"That's nice (I was quite impressed with CML, which has similar capabilities), but it doesn't really help me unless I'm dead set on writing a program with thousands of preemptive threads."

Non-preemtive threads.

"Your link (well, what should have been a link) is dead. And scalability is mostly irrelevant."

Righhhht, scalability is mostly irrelevant. Not for everybody.

"Saying "Java is slow" has some quite obviously understood implications by both you and me, so don't play stupid. That doesn't win any arguments. Java may well be faster at...oh, I don't know, closing. For the vast majority of cases, if I want to sit down and write something that a user interacts with, a Java program is much more sluggish than a C++ program. This is not something that I'm the only one trumpeting -- anyone that's used Java has run into this. And don't give me the "you're using a slow JVM" bullshit that Java advocates love to spout -- I've been developing exclusively with IBM's JDK. There isn't a faster JVM out there for Linux."

Your problem seems to be Swing, not Java. Furthermore, JVM isn't the only way to implement Java.

I still think your complaint should be about Swing, and not Java.

"As for your claim that they can always be dealt with later in the implementation, I have an excellent counterexample -- the JVMs that you're so staunchly supporting. When Java was released, it ran like a dog. Sun promised that better compilers would improve things. Optimization got a little better. JITs helped. And you know what? Java is, indeed, faster than it once was. It is *still* sluggish, however. And it's not going to improve much more. And the *language* has limited this -- the lack of typed container objects, the required bounds checking, the almost-impossible-to-avoid reliance on heavy heap-based dynamic allocation of memory. No implementation can fix this."

So if they've improved performance over the years, it can't be done anymore for some imaginative reason? Garbage.

"Java as a *language* is terminally limited to never run faster than at a certain clip. Now, it's still quite useful for many things, but not for performance-critical stuff, which happens to matter to me."

Right, like some end-user GUI stuff. Performance critical indeed.

"And I won't agree with you there."

'fputs' isn't broken? Can you say buffer overflow by design?

"Really, really easy. Look at glib for C or any one of many, many good string classes for C++."

Wrong. This isn't language extention. This is a library written by someone.

"How do you think someone is going to "prematurely optimize" a language spec? Do you want to wait until a language is widely used and *then* run out and make lots of changes to it? Heck, that isn't even relevant."

Reread my last response.

"And one day, *you* will realize that having a speedy language does not entail *losing* other functionality."

C is definitely slower than assembly on micro-benchmarks, and even otherwise. Orders of magnitudes slower. Your point?

Re:What?

[0x0d0a]

because some microbenchmark says so

And you're claiming that it's not, simply because you like it. I'd say that my criteria are at *least* as valid.

Nah, your best bet are zeros and ones

Except that isn't usually the case. It simply isn't reasonable for a human to know all the timings for the various chips they're targeting and write perfect code any more, and even if they could, CPUs are too complex, and compilers too good. Rasterman, who writes a good deal of low-level code to do graphics stuff very quickly (and hence knows x86 assembly better than most), recently wrote how he spent a huge amount of time rewriting a C library in x86 assembly, and got no real speedups in his hand-tweaked one. Even tiny embedded systems are leaving assembly in droves, because compilers are *good* these days.

Plus, targeting multiple x86 processors, where you might have obsolete opcodes implemented in microcode or optimal alignments might change isn't really reasonable for much of anything.

I wouln't call Java's support bolted on. It's language level as well."

Ah, ah, ah, it still depends on pthreads. Pthreads isn't native.

Your statement is simply nonsensical. Feel free to show Slashdot a place in the Java spec where it says "implemented JVMs shall utilize the pthreads library".

Non-preemptive threads

Fine, non-preemptive threads. It doesn't help me unless I want to write a program with thousands of *non-preemptive* threads. ...scalability is mostly irrelevant. Not for everybody.

Fine, let me clarify it. Scalability, the sort of way Sun is selling is (which translates to "you can add more hardware to get some reasonable amount of performance increase" is totally fucking irrelevant to almost every software package in the world. Yes, perhaps erlang is useful for 80 node setups (I'm not saying it is, just that I don't care enough to try to find out). I (and the overwhelming majority of other people) are not working with 80 node setups, and the interesting factor is whether performance sucks on a single node system.

Your problem seems to be Swing, not Java.

No, in fact, it is *not* Swing. There are plenty programs with Java components that do not use Swing -- and they're *still* slow, and it's *still* because of the Java bit.

Furthermore, JVM isn't the only way to implement Java.

And this is totally irrelevant to the discussion, because running a Java program in IBM's JVM is the fastest way to run Java on Linux. No existing Linux native code compiler produces code of equivalent quality. So unless you want Java to appear even slower than it actually is, you're going to be talking about running in a JVM.

So if they've improved performance over the years, it can't be done anymore for some imaginative reason? Garbage.

No, it's simply massively trailed off. All the big issues with the implementations (well, the major ones, like Sun's and IBM's) have already been worked out, and there isn't much left to be fixed. If you'll look at the improvements of JVMs since...oh, I don't know, '99, they've been pretty steadily trailing off. There are fundamental issues with Java at the language level that cap performance, which I listed earlier in this thread.

Right, like some end-user GUI stuff. Performance critical indeed.

Yes, actually that *is* performance critical. Feel free to reimplement SDL or GTK in Java while I laugh. Very few pieces of software on a PC-or-larger system are as performance-critical as real-time stuff that a user is interacting with, like games or a word processor. It doesn't really matter if my backup server has 30% worse performance, but it does if Quake does.

Also, you took issue with my link to Bagley's Language Shootout page...yet that page deals almost exclusively with core computational operations, not "end-user GUI stuff".

'fputs' isn't broken? Can you say buffer overflow by design?

Have you ever actually *seen* or *used* fputs()? I'd love to hear what "buffer overflow" you're thinking of, because I don't think you have the faintest idea what you're talking about.

Reread my last response

Yup. I rebutted the points in it that were relevant.

This is a library written by someone.

It doesn't add keywords -- it *is* extending the evironment that I'm writing in, however. This is also completely irrelevant, because the semantics don't matter -- only whether the missing functionality is present. Which it is.

C is definitely slower than assembly on micro-benchmarks, and even otherwise. Orders of magnitudes slower. Your point?

[laughing my ass off] Okay, "orders of magnitude", eh? Before making a damn fool of yourself any more, run out and find yourself a benchmark where your C compiler produces code that is a *hundred* times slower than your hand-coded assembly. This should be entertaining. Find me...oh, a matrix multiplication benchmark, say, where assembly is 100 times faster than a C compiler can generate. I'd love to see what flaws *in the C language* you can find that would ever make C 100 times slower than assembly. The flaws I pointed out in Java were *in the language itself*.

Re:What?

[dmelomed]

"And you're claiming that it's not, simply because you like it. I'd say that my criteria are at *least* as valid."

That's not true. What I said was the microbenchmark you mentioned doesn't bear any significance for the many real-life projects' performance. Dismissing the language as slow just because some implementation of it performs poorly on some microbenchmark is valid? Be it Java or any other language. Take a look at the SEDA link I gave you. Or just google for 'SEDA' and 'Haboob'.

"Except that isn't usually the case. It simply isn't reasonable for a human to know all the timings for the various chips they're targeting and write perfect code any more, and even if they could, CPUs are too complex, and compilers too good. Rasterman, who writes a good deal of low-level code to do graphics stuff very quickly (and hence knows x86 assembly better than most), recently wrote how he spent a huge amount of time rewriting a C library in x86 assembly, and got no real speedups in his hand-tweaked one. Even tiny embedded systems are leaving assembly in droves, because compilers are *good* these days.
"
I thought you wanted to trade features and convenience for speed. Or is it some features and convenience?

"Your statement is simply nonsensical. Feel free to show Slashdot a place in the Java spec where it says "implemented JVMs shall utilize the pthreads library".

I don't think I was talking about the language specs at that point. Rather implementations.

"Fine, let me clarify it. Scalability, the sort of way Sun is selling is (which translates to "you can add more hardware to get some reasonable amount of performance increase" is totally fucking irrelevant to almost every software package in the world. Yes, perhaps erlang is useful for 80 node setups (I'm not saying it is, just that I don't care enough to try to find out). I (and the overwhelming majority of other people) are not working with 80 node setups, and the interesting factor is whether performance sucks on a single node system."

That's not the kind of scalability I was talking about. I was talking about application scalability. And it certainly is possible to write Java progs which scale better than equivalent C programs. On the same hardware. It has been done.
The difference is the kinds of applications. Labeling a language "just slow" for any kinds of applications make a lot of sense?

"Have you ever actually *seen* or *used* fputs()? I'd love to hear what "buffer overflow" you're thinking of, because I don't think you have the faintest idea what you're talking about."

I admit, I was thinking of gets(), and wrote 'fputs'. And no, I've never used either (and never will). There are great libraries for dynamically-allocated strings in C, but it would have been better if these were part of C in the first place (the standard).

"It doesn't add keywords -- it *is* extending the evironment that I'm writing in, however. This is also completely irrelevant, because the semantics don't matter -- only whether the missing functionality is present. Which it is."

This is relevant to our discussion, since you wrote speed is almost everything in a language. While I wrote that speed is secondary to other goals. If you trade those goals in a language design for speed, you would very unlikely find fixing these issues in the future easy. While performance issues can be dealt in the implementation far easier than breaking language standards. We both agree JVMs have become better performance-wise.

"[laughing my ass off] Okay, "orders of magnitude", eh? Before making a damn fool of yourself any more, run out and find yourself a benchmark where your C compiler produces code that is a *hundred* times slower than your hand-coded assembly. This should be entertaining. Find me...oh, a matrix multiplication benchmark, say, where assembly is 100 times faster than a C compiler can generate. I'd love to see what flaws *in the C language* you can find that would ever make C 100 times slower than assembly. The flaws I pointed out in Java were *in the language itself*."

Maybe not orders, maybe just one order. This is pure speculation anyway. The point is, these are all trade offs, Java and Erlang are higher-level languages than both C and assembly, and raw speed is definitely a trade-off for convenience, portability, etc., etc.

Re:What?

[0x0d0a]

Take a look at the SEDA link I gave you

It was broken, but I found it via google. Okay, fine. What I assume the relevant information is at the site is Despite using Java, we have achieved performance that rivals (and sometimes exceeds) that of C/C++. The point of his paper was that the particular architecture he was using, *even though* implemented in Java, performed better than Apache and some other webserver called Flash that I haven't heard of. It's comparing architecture 1 in Java versus architecture 2 in C. If he wants to build an architecture 1 server in C, there might be more grounds for comparison. Apache certainly does not represent a performance cap on C -- there are many webservers written in C that outperform Apache -- Boa and Tux are two off the top of my head, though I'm sure I could find more if I went looking.

I thought you wanted to trade features and convenience for speed. Or is it some features and convenience.

Oh, I want to be able to code in the thing, sure. It's quite feasible to code large scale software projects in C, as has been demonstrated many times. It simply isn't feasible to do the same in assembly (granted, there has been some work on oddities like typed assembly language, but they're nothing more than research projects, and I doubt they'll ever add up to much.). I want a language that places a few constraints on the software author to improve the optimizer. Ocaml is a good example that good speed and functionality can be had together -- now, the only thing that needs to be done is produce a popular, imperative language that has good performance. (Not all of us are functional language fans.)

I don't think I was talking about the language specs at that point. Rather implementations.

Okay, fine. Blackdown Java doesn't use pthreads. It also eats more memory (and, incidently, runs more slowly than IBM's JVM, which does use pthreads.)

And it certainly is possible to write Java progs which scale better than equivalent C programs. On the same hardware. It has been done.

I can write a bublesort in C and a quicksort in Java or visa versa. My beef is that the Java language puts fundamental caps on performance that I think are unwarranted and unnecessary, regardless of whether the language is "modern" or not.

Okay, gets() has been judged to have risks higher than the worthwhile benefits, and has been obsoleted. GCC at least will issue a warning when you use it. There are certainly times when using gets() could be justified -- if, for instance, I have a program that uses IPC through stdin, so I have guarantees on the length of the buffer -- the code on each end is trusted. This way, I don't have to check lengths. However, there's no requrement to use gets() if it's not appropriate for your situation (i.e. reading in data from the user), since fgets() exists and works just fine.

Just to give you some perspective, I was arguing about language performance some time ago on Slashdot and someone mentioned that IBM had added or was considering adding an option to disable bounds checking on arrays precisely because of the performance hit. People *care* about the peformance involved in bounds-checking everything. If you're using the appropriate API call for the appropriate situation, there's no problem.

This is relevant to our discussion, since you wrote speed is almost everything in a language...if you trade those goals in a language design for speed, you would very unlikely find fixing these issues in the future easy. While performance issues can be dealt in the implementation far easier than breaking languages.

I said that functionality could be added later -- performance limitations stuck with developers forever. You said that functionality should be added soon and performance worried about later. I responded and said that this *had* happend via libraries like glib for C. You complained that functionality was being added to libraries, rather than (technically) to the language. I said that it was an issue of semantics -- that whether the improvements added keywords or functions didn't matter, as long as they added the needed functionality. I still stand by that, and I don't see how what you wrote here is a rebuttal to that.

Maybe not order, maybe just one order.

I'm very dubious that you could even manage one order. Perhaps there's a case somewhere that could do this, but in general, even a few years back when compilers were much less good, recoding inner loops was unlikely to buy you anything like this. As I pointed out, Rasterman was unable to improve on current gcc code.

The point is, these are all trade offs, Java and Erlang are higher-level languages than both C and assembly, and raw speed is definitely a trade-off for convenience, portability, etc., etc.

I disagree that raw speed must be traded to achieve convenience. I'm not a huge fan of ocaml the language, but ocaml code is extremely portable, runs nearly as fast as C, and is a very high-level language. Both speed and modernity can be achieved.

C compilers could get significantly better optimization (and add better checking and modern features) if an additional series of constraints were laid on top of the very free-form C. There are a few languages that do this sort of thing now. Splint, for instance (a lint for C that can handle extra constraints on C), can do this a little. I've seen more involved ones, though I don't have names handy.

The Debian packages roll out"

[Anonymous Coward]

The debian packages are out and available at gnu-debs ...

Get them and get ready to write your DotGNU programs and well ... GNU supports this , so for a change sell your soul to .GNU

Re:Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims Tr

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.
Microsoft plays a zero-sum game.
what good are invitations to use an open implementation of a language that MS controls ?
They don't need to embrace it, bcs it is their
platform. That just leaves the extend and extinguish part.
In the end I fear this will be folly.

Microsoft's coat tails are saturated with applies poison grease.
None may ride there.

EFF working overtime

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard Microsoft just hired the judge from the EVISA case to rule that Microsoft owns the word "NET".

Yes a limit ;)

[manyoso]

This is all true, but right now people who choose to help or participate in the DotGNU/Portable.NET project are precluded from participating in mono-hackers which is the mailing list devoted to technical discussions about Mono. That is a clear limit placed upon the Mono project because of it's affiliation with Ximian. Miguel does not want Mono developers who are also affiliated with Portable.NET on the mono-hackers list because of confidential information relating to contracts Ximian has, or will have, with various groups. This limits Mono developers, who are also interested in Portable.NET, from contributing to technical discussions about Mono.

Re:Yes a limit ;)

[Amadodd]

AFAIK the DotGNU project needs an IP "clean room" to keep their goal of a MS free .Net implementation. They are using the ECMA standard for input and that is supposed to be it. This is not the Mono goal, so obviously DotGNU people should not be on the Mono list.

.Not sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

.Not has too many memory issues and security holes.
We developing in J2EE and J2ME which is a million times more secure and stable.

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought .NET code is just a bytecode like java... it's always either JIT compiled or interpreted (i.e. the "compiler" is _always_ there, it cannot be removed)... Is there such a thing as a compiler of .NET code to machine language? Is that what we are talking about here?

So what you're saying is...

[AnyoneEB]

Portable.NET is now 100% pure Free Software, with no dependencies on third party C# tools

They made a third party C# compiler doesn't rely on a third party C# compiler?

Cocoa apps in C#?

[theolein]

Why not try writing them in Objective C. It's very powerful is flexible enough to have bridges to Perl, Java, TCL, Python and Ruby and allows you direct intergation of plain C as well as close integration of C++. Not only this but if you're into frameworks, you'll find that Cocoa has quite a lot of them.

Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[zruty]

This place is really getting full of M$ trolls.

Dont you all see the pattern here? Oh geez, let's all begin developping using this so neat C$ language and let's contribute to this so great .NET$ "innovation". Bill and his buffoons must be smoking a big fat one with a smile now.... And we are even lighting it for them...

The trap is set, and we are happily jumping on the trigger using both feet. Of course, Bill will help us out by releasing his .NET vital infrastructure source code real soon now, since we are so nice in contributing to the hype and fud ourselves. And of course, there is no way in hell Bill will pollute his own spec just for our own good and for the sake of his own pocket... Noooooo, of course not!

During this time, Java continues to die slowly, getting fewer and fewer developpers. Don't you realize that we are contributing in digging our own grave?

Java might be not so great, but it is still the only true alternative to this M$ obscenity.

Please people, read the J2EE spec, the Java language spec., and go play with JBoss for a while... Then, come back, and take another look at this .NET$ aberration and you will be the one laughing, not Bill and his monkeys.

Wake up people!

Zruty

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[elflord]

Dont you all see the pattern here? Oh geez, let's all begin developping using this so neat C$ language and let's contribute to this so great .NET$ "innovation". Bill and his buffoons must be smoking a big fat one with a smile now.... And we are even lighting it for them...
... And of course, there is no way in hell Bill will pollute his own spec just for our own good and for the sake of his own pocket

You're completely missing the point. What Bill chooses to do or not to do with Microsofts implementation of the C# language has little relevance to its usefulness as a development tool for writing Linux/UNIX applications. Unlike Java, C# has been turned over to standardisation committees. Basically, it's got a life of its own outside of Microsoft HQ now. Bill can't unilaterally "pollute" something that is controlled by a standards body. Of course, Microsoft can make a non-compliant version of their own language. But then again, so what ? Microsoft have been making non-compliant implementations of other languages for years. C, C++, Java ... you name it, they've butchered it. But it didn't prevent those technologies from being useful.

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[stefpe]

Yes, sure MS has turned over C# to a standard committee.

But I don't think that matters. Unless LOADS off people start developing .NET apps on Linux/Unix very soon, Microsoft is still going to be the ruling force behind .NET.

If or until this changes, the great majority of .NET developers will encounter .NET first on Windows, all the books on the market will be about .NET on Windows and so on.
That means that the open source community will constantly have to play catch up with Microsoft each time they release a new version or new tools or libraries.

In the end, I think this is a no-win situation.(If you're interested in alternatives to Microsoft's platforms).
I think all this will do is lure developers away from Linux and Unix. They might start out with .NET on Linux or something, but after a while, I think a lot of them will realise they have to switch to Windows because all the new, cool libraries are Windows-only. Yeah, .NET is supposed to be portable, but I'll bet that a lot of the stuff will be specific to Windows anyway (think ActiveX).

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[Anonymous Coward]

hi Zruty,
How does it feel to be a consipiracy theorist? You are a sad sack of shit, my friend. Go buy some MSFT stock (or sell Red Hat short) and enjoy life, you fucking loon.

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[The Bungi]

Can I interest you in some nice Black Helicopters (TM)?

Let me know.

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[zruty]

Standards and M$.... LOL; where have you been these past years?

What do you do when you are a big fat M$ Gorilla and you go play in the open and well regulated field of "standards"?

Let's say M$ Bill encounter Mr Kerberos Standard. Purely hypothetical situation, of course....

[Bill$:] Well, Mr Kerberos, would you mind if I hijack a little obscure part of your spec so that for now on, using this "innovation" to your standard, only M$ based clients will be able to talk Kerberos with M$ based servers? You see, I need this innovation for a pet project of mine called .NET$

[Mr Kerberos:] Well, Bill$, that would render my standard a bit weak dont you think? What about all the non-M$ clients and non-M$ servers out there? That would render them inoperative with M$ servers/apps wouldn't it?

[Bill$:] Of course not, those "less efficient and surely dying applications and servers" will have access to my clever "innovation" just by signing a Non Disclosure Agreement giving me access to to everything they own and breathe; or even better, they could simply switch to this brand innovation of mine, .NET$, the new and more secure way to do E-Busine$$. ....

VRML is another standard. M$ participated in the development of this standard until its own VRML 2.0 proposition got rejected. M$ simply left the VRML standardisation effort. How well does VRML do these days? Does M$ Explorer support VRML natively?

VRML is a standard. It's got a life of his own... M$ is simply ignoring VRML. ...

Corba vs COM/DCOM.... Should I continue? ....

M$ is big and heavy; when you are a planetary monopoly, you dictate the standards, not the other way around. And this, I know from experience.

I dont dispute the fact that C$ and .NET$ are useful; they are or will be as much useful as ActiveX and Outlook are. People (and viruses) all over the planet are using them. I know that, you know that.

My point is that M$ dont need us to develop C$ and .NET$ for Linux; they have plenty of bright monkeys to do that themselves, people with access to the "right documentation". Spending time doing this ourselves is a waste of time.

My point is that Java/J2EE is a much more mature alternative, and one alternative that M$ doesn't control well. Of course, Sun could have played the "standards" game with a bit more wisdom. But standards are not that important in a M$ monopoly world.

My point is that by developping for .NET$, we are potentially tying our open source code with M$ patents. M$ monkeys are happy. M$ lawyers are big, heavy, and smiling too.

Why reinvent the wheel when so much is available with J2EE/Java? Why not contribute to J2EE/Java on our own instead of diluting it's impact? J2EE/JBoss should be on our radar, not .NET

For me, .NET$ and C$ is a pure waste of time and opportunities. The M$ Gorilla is smiling.

Zruty

Re:Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[zruty]

Exactly.

It's so obvious it hurts.

Zruty

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

decent language/runtime, uncertain legal status

[g4dget]

I think C#/CLI is a decent language and runtime, and the open source implementations of it are shaping up quite well. C#/CLI are mostly a copy of Java, but they fix some nagging technical issues with Java/JVM.

The biggest problem I see is that Microsoft is claiming patents on the CLI:

According to Microsoft, third-party developers who want to develop or deploy an implementation of C# development tools and CLI-compliant virtual machines, which are part of the .Net framework, must enter into a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) license agreement with Microsoft. That's the short answer. [...]

According to Microsoft's director of intellectual property Michele Herman, who I interviewed earlier this year, the answer is a qualified yes. "If someone implemented a product that conforms to the specification, we believe we have a patent or one pending that's essential to implementing the specification.

This has also been reported elsewhere and confirmed by Microsoft. What the patents in question are remains unclear; given that C#/CLI also really is just a copy of earlier technologies (and even Java/JVM hardly contains new ideas), the patents are probably bogus, but that wouldn't keep Microsoft from causing big legal troubles.

Note that the situation with Java/JVM isn't much better. Sun has been filing hundreds of patents on Java/JVM-related technologies, some of which look like they are essential for creating compatible implementations (e.g., the bytecode type checking), and Sun's intellectual property policy towards third party Java-related projects and implementations has often been hostile. Sun has repeatedly tried to kill third party Java implementations (all conforming Java implementations depend on Sun source code). Sun has had to be dragged kicking and screaming even to the point where they don't claim ownership of ideas developed by others (!) as part of the community process. And Sun renegged on their promise to make Java a language standard twice. Sun is not to be trusted either.

I think both Sun and Microsoft are equally duplicitous and manipulative when it comes to Java or C#, respectively. My conclusion is that, until either Sun or Microsoft or both make a firm, binding commitment on intellectual property issues, neither platform is suitable for widespread adoption by open source projects. Furthermore, until Sun and/or Microsoft create open standards without even a hint of patent encumbrances, even commercial software developers should consider both systems the equivalent of VisualBasic: a proprietary language that can be changed by its creators at will and for which there will be no viable independent third party implementations.

C# or Java could have been a great thing if they had turned out to be open, standardized, and widely used. But, frankly, there are plenty of better languages and runtimes than either C# or Java around anyway, so given that those languages remain proprietary, why bother with them?

Ever heard of XSP?

[Anonymous Coward]

checkout from cvs and build the following:
1. mono
2. mcs
3. xsp
Follow the directions after building xsp. You can test ASP.NET samples with their test server on Mono.

HELLO! Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

vi vs. emacs.. gee, let me think, emacs is a POS, its like comparing a piece of shit with something that doesn't smell like ass. emacs even has the word MAC in it, which also signifies that its fucking shit (like the iMac). I don't see how there could be a war between 2 things that aren't even remotely relevant to eachother...

GNOME v KDE? gime a break, SUN is the only people that are using GNOME. Nobody gives a fuck about it. if it weren't for redshit and sun, GNOME would have died before 2.0, like it should have.

anybody that doesn't believe the above is a fucking moron.

Re:HELLO! Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

i think you're just pissed because you can't program in C and that's what mostly GNOME is uses. does it go over your head? is linux too hard for your VBA roots?

now, go cry back to your mommy...

Re:HELLO! Re:DotGnu and Mono

[Erik Hollensbe]

of course, vi stands for 'visual', and we all know that anything that makes light of the fact that it's 'visual' has to be a microsoft product in it's roots, which of course, makes it inherently bad.

and the 'K' desktop environment? What are they thinking? With that white toolbar, and the blue background, we all know what they stand for. WASP (white anglo saxon prostestants)'s only for this desktop!

Guess they didn't get windows forms ported

[Anonymous Coward]

without it, who cares?

Why you would want a compiler in the same language

[mjhans]

unless someone could point me to some need to compile a compiler in it's native language

No need per se except that it proves a couple of points:

a) Your compiler is complete enough to compile an app as big as itself

b) Along the lines of (a), testing: the result of a compiler compiled by itself is called a 2nd generation compiler. If your new compiler (source) code has good code generation, your 2nd generation compiler should work faster than your 1st generation. Also if you have no bugs, your 3rd generation should be binary identical to your 2nd.

c) Proof of concept: your language is somewhat viable for a real application such as yourself (or as marketroids call it, eating your own dog food)

GUIs for Portable.NET, Mono, and Microsoft .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

There are four GUIs available for Mono which can be used for Portable .NET and Microsoft .NET too.

1. GTK# - C#/CLI Bindings to GTK+ 2.0. Works on Windows and Linux. It also has C# Bindings for GNOME 2.0 as GNOME#, GConf as GConf#, Glade as Glade#, etc...
http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net

2. QT# - C#/CLI Bindings to QT 3.0 and KDE. Runs on Linux, but it is difficult to run on Windows though. It currently uses QtC for its C# bindings, but this will change.
http://qtcsharp.sourceforge.net

3. Windows.Forms - the System.Windows.Forms like GUI uses Winelib in Wine and monostub.exe in mono to run on Linux, and it uses native Windows .DLLs for Windows.Forms to run on Windows.

4. ASP.NET - System.Web works on Linux and Windows. It can be tested with XSP test server.
So, to test this, you will need mono, mcs, and xsp.

Re:GUIs for Portable.NET, Mono, and Microsoft .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to mention, there is another GUI developed by the Portable.NET developers.

5. x11# - C# bindings to xlib

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[Anonymous Coward]

The compiler takes ASCII source and turns it into bytecode.

The JIT takes bytecode and turns it into machine code, executing it.

The interpreter executes the bytecode without generating any machine code. This is for platforms that don't have a JIT written. (yet?)

I don't get the joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The DotGNU team consists of lots of contributors, many of whom are coincidentially named 'Rhys Weatherley,'

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Is this like when you say movies are directed by "Alan Smithee" ? Is there some sort of joke here?

This Works Out Great!

[Shuh]

... cause I 100% don't need it! ;)

I only use C#

[BurKaZoiD]

I only use C# because I wanted a C++ similar alternative to some of development issues I had with VB6 (like VB6's notion of polymorphism, it's class limitations, etc). Coming from a C/C++/Assembly background, I've learned to gain an appreciation for VB, and think it is an elegant high-level language. But, I really only use it because I have to sometimes. As a consequence, I had no desire to pollute my knowledge of VB6 with VB.Net, which is why I turned to C#. C# is fantastic and all. It's so nice to use an OO language that actually makes sense, but it also has alot of drawbacks, and cut out a lot of mechanisms I really loved in C++, and I'm for damn sure not accustomed to not cleaning up after my code (even though I know there is no

delete

operator. I still purposefully set all non-primitives to null explicitly. Just a force of habit, I guess.)

Re:I only use C#

[Malcontent]

You really should have given objective-C a shot. It's damn nice and much much much much much better then C#. Plus webobjects is a tour de force.

Re:I only use C#

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell do you know if it's much, much better than C#? I bet you haven't even done a Hello World in the language.

Re:I only use C#

[rnd()]

fyi: vb7 is very similar syntactically to vb6 and yet it has all of the functionality of c#.

Portable .NET on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Portable .NET work on Windows?

Re:Portable .NET on Windows

[madasa]

At the moment it need cygwin. So the answer is a qualified yes. But other, less painless (or painful, depending on your POV) ways to run pnet on win32 are being explored, including cross-compiling and mingw.

mds

Java is as dangerous because of Sun patent trap

[g4dget]

In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA [apache.org].

This is wrong, or at least highly misleading. Sun has granted rights only to standard developed under the JCP from here on forward (and then only to participants in the JCP):

* For Sun-led specifications finalized from here forward (including revisions to existing specifications) the license terms will allow independent implemenations under open source licenses.

Sun has hundreds of patents on core Java technologies that are unrelated to JCP efforts, and Sun has granted no licenses to those. You would likely run into those if you tried to create an independent Java implementation.

Both C#/CLI and Java/JVM should be considered proprietary platforms covered by numerous patents. And both Sun and Microsoft have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted on intellectual property issues or commitments to open standards.

There are plenty of high quality, truly open languages and runtimes out there. Open source software developers are fools to waste any time on either C# or Java until Microsoft and/or Sun make binding commitments to make those platforms truly open.

Well if that is true, then the MONO folks should..

[ainsoph]

Be quite concerned about Ken Thompsons idea. now shouldnt they?

What about Mac?

[Latent Heat]

It is generally regarded that Mac is software-wise a Microsoft "client state", i.e. a platform for Office. Mac creates the appearance of independence, but sales of Macs and OS-X are no skin off Microsoft's back if they can sell copies of Office.

Why aren't they porting .NET/Windows Forms and so on to OS-X? For starters, it would make it easier to maintain their Office software base on a common platform. Are they worried that independant developers would do the same and mess up their master plan?

Sun has to strive for true platform independence with its Java, but since Microsoft is the Apple silent partner, what would be wrong, from Microsoft's dark, evil perspective, of running .NET on both Windows and Mac -- they run Office both places while there is no such thing as Linux-Office.

Re:What about Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

They already did it. The recent version of Rotor can be run on OS X. Rotor also runs on FreeBSD.
Some research guy from South Africa ported rotor to Linux.

patent application #20020059425

[g4dget]

I see nothing in that patent application that has anything directly to do with C#/CLI. That patent has to do with distributed computation, and it would apply equally to systems implemented in Java or C++. I don't see anything in it that would apply to a conforming C#/CLI implementation.

Rhys Weatherly

[Anonymous Coward]

I know Rhy - I used to work with him. I've seen the way he codes and I've had to maintain what he wrote. Hopefully he's a better programmer now then what he was before when he was writing window managers and desktop protocols.

Everyone needs to jump in now and help Rhys get things cleaned up.

Re:Rhys Weatherly

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off and die bitch! Must be another Rhys cuz his coding is incredible and his design is even better.

Re:Rhys Weatherly

[madasa]

Slandering people while hiding behind anonymity is for weak-kneed cowards, throwing words on public forums like so many worthless lumps of pheasant waste. After programming for 20 years (10 professionally) I've learned more from glancing through Rhys' code than I can say. His sources are clean and clear. Each routine is a hard, bright little creature. It's literature.

You don't like it? Fine. You can even say so. If you show your face and spell your reasons, maybe you can save a little seed of dignity. Better yet, show your code, so we can all see your basis of authority for judging Rhys as sub-par. #dotgnu on irc.openprojects.net is fine. For now I'll continue to think of you as a little, little person, racking computer experience by trolling slashdot between troubled, intense bouts of pr0n.

Oh, yeah: Cheers.

mds

Re:Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims Tr

[epukinsk]

I have a feeling that if Microsoft, a good-as-convicted monopolist, tries to sue a community of open source developers on a patent basis in order to prevent interopability, they will get their balls chopped off in court.

Or at least the defense will have a very strong case.

Erik

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[ingenuus]

Right. So how does a compiler written in C# (compiled to cil) ever run without another JIT (to machine code) compiler or interpreter?

Re:Maybe Portable.NET could be used to bootstrap M

[ingenuus]

Nevermind... I'm sorry... you're saying that the interpreter (written in C or whatever) runs the JIT compiler, right?

The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[mrsam]

First of all, cOM is on it's way out. It is being replaced by the new remoting and web services architecture.

I've yet to see anyone address this point, which must be made. I'm not sure what that "remoting and web service architecture" is. I don't know. But I damn know one thing: in three or four years Microsoft will obsolete that technology, and it will be replaced with something else.

Microsoft receives significant revenue from training armies of MCSE, using endless arrays of certifications and development programs. And, as such, they have a vested interest in keeping the revenue alive with what I call a "steady technology churn." They can't just pick an API, and go with it for the long term future. They need to force all the MCSEs back into the training camps, in order to make sure that their paper certifications do not expire.

I dabbled with some Windows programming, many years ago. You wanna know one thing? Nothing that I've learned back then is worth today any more than a hair on my ass. VBX controls, DAOs, all of that has long been made obsolete. I've done _nix programming for quite sometime before trying the Windows waters, but I quickly figured out what was going on: that the primary occupation of a Windows developer is to provide revenue to Microsoft, in terms of continuing MSDN subscriptions, fees for an endless stream of documentation for Application Interface Of The Year.

"Developers, developers, developers", indeed...

So I quickly ended that short term experiment, and went back to hacking _nix. The thing about _nix -- which is 180 degrees opposite of Windows programming -- is that the skills and the knowledge that you've learned ten or fifteen years ago is still used, and is as valid today as it was back then. If you go and learn today's crop of Windows APIs, in just a couple of years all the time you've spent today would be a complete and a total waste of time, because nothing that you've learned now is relevant any more, it's been obsoleted.

On the other hand, things like file descriptors, pipes, sockets, and other basic POSIX APIs will still be just as useful ten years from now as they are today, and as they were ten years ago. That is not to say that you won't learn anything new in the mean time. On the contrary, I have learned many great _nix technologies over the years, and I'm sure that I'll keep learning more exciting stuff in the years to come.

The key difference is that everything that I will learn will only complement, enrich, and add to my existing, growing base of knowledge. Unlike with Windows, where its only purpose would be to replace stuff that's been obsoleted by Microsoft. As a Windows programmer, I'm in for a lifetime's worth of a struggle to keep churning through one API after another, one Microsoft language, or library, or interface API after another, all while being milked by Microsoft for the training and development fees in the mean time. As a _nix programmer, I'm in for a lifetime of enrichment and expansion of my technical skills and knowledge.

Re:The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[The Bungi]

You have got to be kidding me. "DAO and VBX"?? Is that what you consider to be the full spectrum of Windows-based development?

What in Unix are you comparing your experience in Windows to? Bash scripts? Perl/CGI? Or kernel hacking?

In any case, if you are confusing the *technologies* you use while developing software with your analysis and design skills (which are the same regardless of the language, technology or OS you happen to use), I'd say you have other, more pressing problems than being disillusioned with any given platform.

Re:The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[mrsam]

You have got to be kidding me. "DAO and VBX"?? Is that what you consider to be the full spectrum of Windows-based development?

No, it was merely an advanced concept that's commonly called an "example". Name me any Windows API, library, or technology that was current five years ago, and is current today. The same thing can be said about _each and every_ Windows API.

Every Windows API/library that exists today, or ever existed in the past, comes complete with a ticking clock. When the alarm goes off, everything becomes obsolete, and all the time you've spent learning it is gone completely to waste.

Re:The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[The Bungi]

No, it was merely an advanced concept that's commonly called an "example".

Sarcasm!

Name me any Windows API, library, or technology that was current five years ago, and is current today. The same thing can be said about _each and every_ Windows API.

Actually, you have it all backwards, probably because you don't really know what you're talking about. Please name *one* core Windows API that was in Windows 95 and is not supported in Windows XP. Please, just one.

Microsoft may tell me that I should use the registry instead of INI files, but that doesn't mean that the INI APIs are removed. In fact, even from Win3x, the only APIs that were removed were those that dealt with segmented memory allocation and a few obsolete GDI calls that dealt with 16-bit coordinate systems. Though that doesn't mean that they're not supported anymore. In fact, I run Corel DRAW 3.0 under Windows XP Pro almost every day, just fine.

Whether you [like it|care|know] or not, Microsoft has been a model of backwards compatibility for years, with the possible exception being DOS (and good riddance, IMO). On the other hand, one can hardly fault them for expanding and enhancing everything with each iteration of the OS. I sure don't.

everything becomes obsolete, and all the time you've spent learning it is gone completely to waste

Again, you're confusing software engineering skills with technical know-how. Perhaps in your mind they're the same, but they're really not.

Re:The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[mrsam]

Please name *one* core Windows API that was in Windows 95 and is not supported in Windows XP. Please, just one.

Sure: VBX. Kindly help me figure out how to use the current version of Visual Studio to design VBX controls.

Ask Jason Hunter, vice-president, Apache Software.

[NZheretic]

New JCP Agreement and Rules to Stimulate Innovation, Create More Choices for Java Developers

"JCP 2.5 breaks new ground by making open source licensing possible for those who work on Java specifications and those who create compatible independent implementations of the specifications," said Jason Hunter, vice-president, Apache Software Foundation and JCP Executive Committee member. "In addition the cost structure has been changed to allow smaller developer groups and individual developers to gain broader access to Java specifications, often times free of cost."

It may not be perfect, but at least it is fully open.

I wonder

[motox]

Is anybody developing an opensource OSX compatibility layer . It just fails me how we can blame m$ so much and the strongest groups spend most of their time trying to monkey m$ engineers...

Re:Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims Tr

[Malcontent]

What would cause the court system to extract it's nose out of Bill Gates' ass?

See Microsoft Communications Protocol Program

[NZheretic]

The DOJ negotated Microsoft Communications Protocol Program effectivly grants Microsoft the ability to boycott GPL/LGPL licensed implementations.

come on--use your head

[g4dget]

I don't know how much clearer one can put this: that agreement applies only to software and specifications developed as part of the JCP. It does not apply to the entire Java platform or any of the stuff Sun cooks up on their own.

That is, almost everything in the Java 2 platform is completely Sun proprietary. Sun even renegged on standardizing it through ISO/ECMA, which would at least have required them to disclose what patents apply.

C#/CLI has patent problems. But so does Java/JVM, and at this point, they look more serious than those with C#/CLI. If you want an open platform, you have to look somewhere else: neither C#/CLI nor Java/JVM fits the bill.

Byte code CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone out there working on a BYTE CODE cpu?

Do you the patent search yourself

[NZheretic]

Remember I stated : Although there is prior art examples of individual technologies such as the JVM etc, Microsoft patents such as the one mentioned, define and claim the interoperation of the components, in such a way that any re-implementations will be sure to be covered by the patents.

Go to the US Patent Office's website and do a search yourself ( hint "AN/Microsoft" ), there are plenty of examples of patents to be concerned about.

Oh, the Irony!

[Twintop]

Here is a story talking about an open source version of the .NET arcitecture, and right below it is an ad saying, "BUY M$ Visual Studio .NET TODAY!"

Neat, but won't MS kill it?

[SysKoll]

Portable .NET sounds pretty neat. However, will it be useful? Assume that it's a success. It 2004 and several corporations are deploying Linux servers to serve department-wide .NET apps, hereby deprived MS from revenue it extracts from heavyweight .NET servers. What prevents MS to change critical parts of the .NET standard in the next iteration? Nothing. It's even likely that the new additions will be heavily patented to protect them against compatible servers. The next generations of .NET apps will then be uncompatible with the portable version and customers will have to revert to all-Windows shops.

Mind you, this is not a flame or anything, I am just trying to be practical here. Anything that can give people breathing rooms when it comes to MS standards is good. But here, I am really afraid that as soon as the portable .NET will start being successful, MS will notice it and intervene.

Any reason why the scenario above could not be implemented?

-- SysKoll

Re:Neat, but won't MS kill it?

[madasa]

Frankly, I see more and more people more and more outraged at Microsoft. The feeling I get reminds me of a public utility -- people need it, that's true. But if there's a chance to slip away they'll take it. In other words, I think the general trend is starting to lean towards not letting Redmond rip people off all the time.

So if more than a few folks start using pnet, because they see it a chance to ease their MS burden, they won't go back to shouldering that burden as easily. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the market. But the consumers, after all, are the market. That gives us something to leverage, although admittedly it's a long-range thing. (OTOH, as you imply, 2 years is fairly long-range in this business...)

So, in short, MS won't be able to just change the standard because noone will use it. They'll use pnet instead. See? ;-)

Cheers,
mds

Re:Neat, but won't MS kill it?

[SysKoll]

So, in short, MS won't be able to just change the standard because noone will use it. They'll use pnet instead. See? ;-)

Wow, that's optimistic. Unfortunately, in most MS shops, the opportunity to deploy a Linux server only comes after the bean counters have a cow when they see the bill for the new 3GHz machines required to do menial server jobs. It means that by the time you get there, a lot of work has already been done on .NET apps. Of course we know that it's suicidal, but MS has billions of marketing dollars to snowjob countless customers.

So I am afraid that you, my friend, are dismissing the Redmond Beast a tad too fast!

Thanks for responding.

-- SysKoll

Come on - Use your eyes,

[NZheretic]

From the JCP FAQ

Q: Whats a JSR?
A: A JSR is a Java Specification Request. This is the document submitted to the PMO by one or more members to propose the development of a new specification or significant revision to an existing specification. There are currently more than 90 Java technology specifications in development in the JCP program, including the next versions of Java(TM) 2, Micro Edition (J2ME(TM)), Java(TM) 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE(TM)), and Java(TM) 2 Standard Edition (J2SE(TM)).

From Effort on the edge, Part 1

But how can you, as a JSR lead, grant that right, where those patents are owned by the companies that make up your expert group? The JCP 2.5 JSPA addresses both in-bound and out-bound intellectual property. In-bound intellectual property is the set of patents, licenses, or other rights that you and your expert group members bring to the table. Out-bound intellectual property signifies the rights of your specification's users, reference implementation, and compatibility test kit.

In essence, when your experts join your expert group, they grant the spec lead the right to sublicense the existing intellectual property they bring to developing the JSR. That not only includes patents, but copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets as well. You and your experts can, in turn, choose whatever license form you desire for your output. If you choose the new Open Source License, you steer your technology's users clear of possible infringement on patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property they might not initially be aware of.

Sun is playing by those new rules. "Prior to the use of JCP 2.0, [Sun's Java licensees] were the only ones to gain access to the technologies needed to implement the things that comprise the Java technology from Sun," explains Gingell. "And licensees typically got all of the specifications, implementations, and conformance tests along with service and support programs as a bundle.

"One way to look at JCP and its evolution is that it's a process of unbundling all of these things. As of JCP 2.5...the specifications, reference implementations, conformance tests are all separately available," adds Gingle. "J2SE is not today available under the terms of JCP 2.5. Sun did commit to making available some of the JSRs it has led under 2.5 terms prior to the adoption of 2.5 by the JCP, and we have committed that all prior JSRs would be available under those terms but on an indefinite schedule. The expectation is that those changes will occur as maintenance on the technology occurs, roughly over the course of a year or so we'd expect."

To facilitate open source J2SE implementations, in August 2002, Sun announced a scholarship program for qualified nonprofit organizations that require access to Sun's compatibility tests to verify their adherence to JSR standards. Nonprofit groups that qualify can obtain Sun's compatibility test kits free of charge.

Gingell notes that, "When J2SE is available under the terms of JCP 2.5, if someone wanted to implement it from specifications, they could do so without also licensing the reference implementation. They would have to license the TCKs to verify that they'd made a compatible implementation. They would thus have to be a TCK licensee, which would be available for free to qualified nonprofits."

At least Sun is making concrete steps towards being more open.
Where are the equivalent public declarations from Microsoft?

Microsoft has patents. So what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact they have patents for Tab Completion.
Automatic word completion system for partially entered data
Software companies usually patent as many things they use in their own software only to avoid being sued by some lame ass that patent those things years later and the consequent extorsion.

Sounds familiar

[SpiffyMarc]

The real trick would be getting C# programmers in the habit of targeting just the ECMA standard rather than the standard + MS lock-in extensions.

Much like the trick of getting web developers away from IE-only tags, DOM objects and the ever-present VB/JScript...

Unfortunately, with Microsoft pushing both the latest version of IE (and most recently, the latest version of the .NET CLR), down everyone's throats with Windows Update automagic update-while-you-view-pr0n, developers will have little choice but to develop for the largest installed userbase. Unfortunately, that is just how it (usually) goes.

just fluff--nothing legally binding

[g4dget]

From the JCP FAQ [jcp.org]

You are reaching if you think that combining Sun's statement on the JCP together with some minor revisions of Java2 mean that Sun makes available all their patents for free Java implementations.

At least Sun is making concrete steps towards being more open.

Sun has made no legally binding commitments on keeping Java open. Sun even pulled out of two standardization processes because they didn't even want to disclose their patents, let along license them.

Where are the equivalent public declarations from Microsoft?

There are none (well, they have committed to RAND, but that's of no interest to open source).

The upshot is that both Microsoft and Sun are spreading PR and FUD. Neither of them has made any legally binding commitment to an open system or language. Neither system offers anything technically new or interesting. That's why the open source community shouldn't waste any more time on either of them.

Far more interesting than C#

[be-fan]

Personally, I really don't see the advantages of Java or C# outside a specific application domain. For heavy systems level work, C++ is superior, because once your needs branch away from what is provided in the standard libraries of Java or .NET, there is a far deeper and broader collection of libraries available for C++. Plus, both Java and C# have an overhead that C++ simply does not have. For applications where performance isn't critical, a *real* high level language is in order. Java and C# claim to be high level, but in all truth, outside of their standard libraries, there is not a whole lot (aside from removed features) in the base language that seperate them from C++. Assuming you have the same libraries for both, and are a competent C++ programming (meaning you use the STL to the point where new/delete are rare in your code) Java/C# code is just as long (or, in the case of Java longer). Python, in comparison, feels like a real high level language. Python code is an order of magnitude shorter than most Java/C# code and much easier to read. Once the new Parrot VM comes out (supposedly it has JIT compiling) these higher level languages will get a significant performance boost, and will be far more appropriate for many applications than Java or C#.

Re:Far more interesting than C#

[Elian]

No supposedly--Parrot has a working JIT now. Dowload it from parrotcode.org and try it...

don't make me murder you.

[zymano]

have a nice christmas you troll.

Sun is doing the same thing

[g4dget]

My point is that the one patent you cite is not relevant.

If you want to talk about patents more generally, yes, Microsoft is patenting a lot of C# related stuff. But so is Sun. Both companies are lying when they say that they are creating "open systems". We have no more reason to trust Sun than Microsoft.

The best approach for the open source community is to give both Sun and Microsoft the cold shoulder. Let McNealy and Gates play out their megalomaniac power plays and let us get on with writing good software.

not entirely correct

[r6144]

Actually gcc code is not too far from the standard (it is glibc and linux kernel that contain a lot of gcc-isms). However, gcc is meant to be portable, and it is really a PITA to make all the code compile on all kinds of compilers, some of them adheres to old standards and have all kinds of quirks. Therefore the C compiler (that are carefully written so that it will compile on all those old-and-buggy compilers) is compiled first (w/o optimization to avoid bugs), then the resulting bootstrap compiler is used to do the actual compilation, so the C++ compiler (etc.) would not need so much care.

So you are incorrect IMO about the bootstrap compiler. It is a full C compiler, and should generate exactly the same code as the real compiler.

these "compelling new ideas" won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

because everyone's still running windows.

A thousand year Reich

[Epeeist]

Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself.

A thousand year Reich. Wasn't that innovated by someone else?

DotGNUstep?

[S11001001]

Maybe not Cocoa, but....

Read the DotGNUstep proposal: a bridge between GNUstep and DotGNU.

If .NET runs on Linux, you don't need win2k server

[Otis_INF]

As a .NET developer I don't give a rats *ss on which platform my software runs, but currently it's just Win2k + .NET (from MS), fine by me. If Mono succeeds on Linux, I can run my software without modification on Linux too, which is a good thing since then the amount of servers which run my software increases, and thus my potential customer base grows too.

If there will be NO .NET on Linux however, and .NET really takes off (it already begins to do that), Linux won't be a logical choice for the application server platform. In other words: linux will go down the same road Novell took years ago.

I don't get it.

[Otis_INF]

Ok, that some people don't understand the big importance of a good, solid, 100% compatible .NET framework on Linux, fine.

But... why 2 frameworks? (Mono and DotGNU). Why is it so damn hard to just focus on the importance of a solid .NET framework on linux so ALL the developers who understand the importance of .NET on Linux join forces and work on 1 platform only (I prefer Mono for this, since it's intentions are better: 100% compatability with MS' .NET api).

Now, Mono can use more developers but these developers are working on their own port of .NET: DotGNU!

I know this has something to do with politics, something to do with licensing. It DOESN'T have anything to do with different technical views on the matter.

I simply can't understand why people are so far fetched focussed on politics instead of the art of software development. Now Linux will probably end up with Mono being finished way too late (if it's not finished in 2003, MS will release generics in .NET first so Mono will be behind that release for another year) and another platform, DotGNU with functionality that only complies on the ECMA standard, and thus is pretty useless in everyday applications, since System.Data, System.Web.* and System.Windows.* are pretty useful. (understatement).

As a .NET developer on Windows I'd like to see a solid .NET platform on f.e. Linux which is compatible with .NET from MS so my customers won't have to use Win2k or Win.net server to run my ASP.NET applications, but have more of a choice. When there is no .NET platform on Linux, Linux is not interesting for me or for my customers, and believe me (looking at what power is inside ASP.NET f.e.) in the future also not interesting anymore for a LOT of developers.

Re:I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

In actual truth, Portable.NET predated Mono, and, in reality, Mono is an alternate or forked project because Ximian simply chose not to cooperate in the original development of Portable.NET. That being said, there are also very different goals and objectives in the development of Portable.NET and Mono. Mono's primary goal has been in creating a runtime environment for enabling .NET software developed under Microsoft Windows to run under Linux. Portable.NET's primary goal is in building an ECMA spec compliant toolchain and runtime that is fully portable. As such, these are actually different purposes and require very different tradeoffs. For example, Ximian can choose to use or even directly license Microsoft framework code as part of it's goal, where Portable.NET would not do this.

Also, another key difference is that Portable.NET exists as part of dotGNU, where the goal is to replace Microsoft hosted services with services hosted on freely licensed platforms. Mono exists in context of a client for Microsoft hosted services in this regard, and also I gather may have some role to play in gnome development.

I am not sure if either project is more or less free than the other nessisarly, but my own interest is not primarly in creating a Microsoft client environment under Linux, so I personally choose to use Portable.NET rather than Mono. I suspect over time there may be more common ground between both projects as each mature and some egos deminish.

Re:I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You want the real truth? Are you sure you can handle the real truth?

Portable.NET started _before_ Mono. Mono was the brainchild of Miguel (GNOME co-founder and CTO of Ximian). Portable.NET was the brainchild of uber hacker Rhys Weatherly.

When Rhys learned of Ximian's intentions he contacted Ximian about his project and asked if there was a chance to combine efforts. Miguel was interested in going it alone so that Ximian could relicense the project for commercial advantage. There was also argument over the C# compilers design.

That's why we have two different projects. Hope you can handle it ;)

Re:I don't get it.

[alext]

And some people don't seem to appreciate the difficulty of achieving 100% compatibility.

DotGNU/Mono will always be in catch-up mode since technical policy is entirely decided by MS. It is impossible to work with DotGNU/Mono without confronting this 'political' reality. Fortunately, it is likely that your customers will continue to see value in other platforms such as Java, so your future is not entirely dependent on the emergence of Microsoft knock-offs.

Re:I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono isn't a port of .NET, it's a port of a small piece of .NET: the development environment. DotGNU is a complete replacement for the ENTIRE MS.NET initiative which includes, but goes far beyond, the development environment. Portable.NET, which predates Mono, is one sub-project of DotGNU.

Mono was started by Miguel because Rhys is a better hacker (by several orders of magnitude... very intimidating), because pnet's GNU licensing would prevent Miguel from subverting freedom for sake of profit, and because Miguel's MS handlers would've cut him off if he hadn't.

Not in Sun's and others self interest to backslide

[NZheretic]

g4dget wrote:

You are reaching if you think that combining Sun's statement on the JCP together with some minor revisions of Java2 mean that Sun makes available all their patents for free Java implementations.

Your ignoring the last paragraph quoted from Effort on the edge, Part 1

Gingell notes that, "When J2SE is available under the terms of JCP 2.5, if someone wanted to implement it from specifications, they could do so without also licensing the reference implementation. They would have to license the TCKs to verify that they'd made a compatible implementation. They would thus have to be a TCK licensee, which would be available for free to qualified nonprofits."

g4dget wrote:"Sun has made no legally binding commitments on keeping Java open.".
At least Sun's Robert A. Gingell Sun Fellow & Vice President has published a Letter of Intent which includes the declration

Again in the interests of meeting the spirit of the requirements, Sun will modify the specification licenses of all the JSRs currently in progress to reflect Apache's requirements as met in the new draft JSPA. And we reaffirm a previous statement that we would work over time to change the licenses of previously completed JSRs to comply with the new JSPA draft. We specifically commit to doing such changes at a minimum for:

JSR 31 (JAXB), JSRs 52, 53, 152, 154 (JSPs/Servlets), JSR 63 (JAXP), JSR 67 (JAXM), JSR 93 (JAXR), JSR 101 (JAXRPC), JSR 127 (Java Server Faces), JSR 172 (J2ME Web Services)

As noted in the introductory summary, we believe these changes constitute a full meeting of Apache's requirements both in letter and in spirit.

Which at least is an effectively legally binding commitment for the aformention JSRs.

It's a start, and it's value should not be dismissed lightly. Once again, Where are the equivalent public declarations from Microsoft?

Why will not Sun pull out of this accord? - Because, increasingly, it is not in Sun's self interest to do so.

Sun has adopted the LGPL/GPL licensed GNOME Desktop for both it's Solaris and Linux systems. In fact so much more open sourced software is being deployed on their systems, adding value to the platforms, that it is not in Sun's interest to limit free lisenced code interoperation with the Java frameworks.
For similar reasons IBM and other Java licensese are pressuring Sun to further open up the Java enviroment.

In it's comments of the voting for the new JCP IBM even commented:

IBM's vote is based on the technical merits of this JSR and is not a vote on the licensing terms. IBM supports licensing models that create an open and level playing field by allowing third parties to create independent implementations of Java Specifications and that do not allow individuals or companies to exercise unnecessary control for proprietary advantage. We support open source as a licensing model for contributions in the JCP, and would hope others will support this direction. This comment is not necessarily directed at the current business or license terms for this JSR, however, it is a statement of IBM's preferred licensing model.

Forces are moving into place which is going to make it very difficult for Sun to backslide to a close model again.

As for FUD, it seem to me that over time, Microsoft is becoming the sole dominant player in lies based on untruths.

By the way g4dget, are you any relation to John Carroll?

Your ignoring the evidence

[NZheretic]

From my quoting of Effort on the edge, Part 1

In essence, when your experts join your expert group, they grant the spec lead the right to sublicense the existing intellectual property they bring to developing the JSR. That not only includes patents, but copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets as well. You and your experts can, in turn, choose whatever license form you desire for your output. If you choose the new Open Source License, you steer your technology's users clear of possible infringement on patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property they might not initially be aware of.

Sun will be submitting the updated J2SE, J2EE etc to the new JCP, and therefore are effectively granting open source developer members full rights to re-implement the standard.

Do you need to be cautious, yes. But is it safer to create an open source Java framework than to re-implementing .NET - Hell yes.

Didn't your mother ever tell you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never use gets or fgets! Your code will coredump as soon as anyone enters a line more than 1000 characters in length.

int main(void){
while(1)
if( getchar() == '\n' )
printf("?\n");
}

Better. The only difference between this and the real ed is that you can kill this one with ^C. If you're the perverse sort, feel free to add the sigmask() required to ignore it too.

Like their standards based browser?

[NigelJohnstone]

ECMA doesn't enforce the standard, it cannot force Microsoft to comply with the definition they print.

Internet Explorer doesn't comply with web standards, why do you think that Microsoft would suddenly stick to standards from the ECMA?

So sure they can make a .NET engine and a compiler, and tomorrow .NET gets extended, and the Linux crowd play catch up.

They're very foolish to play the Microsoft game.

Re:Like their standards based browser?

[ninejaguar]

I thought they we're foolish at first, but then I realized they're doing something that M$ itself has done to other technologies and standards. Embrace and extend. I believe there will be a minimal amount of catch-up at first. Then, when other people and corporations see the viability of such a project, they will lend their resources to warp .NET into their own specific image. But, they will be using this Open Source implementation. The result will be M$ being beaten on two fronts. One on the Java side, the other on the Portable.NET side (in a sense, their own tool).

That's just the language battles. If we move on to the server OS side, they will be beaten by Linux. If you question that, please name one supercomputer on the top ten list running Windows. Linux has been there and done that, and is there now and doing that.

It wouldn't be too outlandish to say that in the next few years, we'll see M$'s dominion limited to their almost total control over the desktop and their office suite. With the constant threat to those growing everyday by Mozilla, Linux/KDE/Gnome, OpenOffice/Gobe Productive Office, M$ will have to improve or eventually be sold off piece-meal in 7-10 years. And, since M$ has proven that you can't beat FREE (IE), the result will be the latter.

wishful thinking

[g4dget]

and therefore are effectively granting open source developer members full rights to re-implement the standard.

There is nothing legally binding there. Sun can do whatever they want at any time, and they can define whatever they like to be part of the JCP or not.

But is it safer to create an open source Java framework than to re-implementing .NET - Hell yes.

Why re-implement either if neither company is playing fair? There is nothing technically particularly interesting or novel about either language.

the lesser of two evils theory?

[g4dget]

Which at least is an effectively legally binding commitment for the aformention JSRs.

If you think that a statement of intent on a web page somewhere is a legally binding contract, I have a bridge to sell you.

Once again, Where are the equivalent public declarations from Microsoft?

Who cares? Neither Java nor C# break technically any new ground. They would have been interesting if they had become open standards, but neither did. Instead, they have become a quagmire of patents and intellectual property claims. Why argue about which one is the lesser of two evils? The open source community should not touch either of them. Let Sun and Microsoft battle it out; let's hope they'll sue each other out of business.

By the way g4dget, are you any relation to John Carroll?

What an idiotic question. You think everybody who isn't enamored with Sun must be a Microsoft shill? I don't work for either Sun or Microsoft. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft management consists of a bunch of megalomaniacal sleazeballs, but so does Sun management.

Now, what about you? You keep deflecting criticism of Sun by making completely irrelevant comparisons with Microsoft. Do you work for Sun by any chance?

See - Not in Sun's and others self interest...

[NZheretic]

My follow-up Not in Sun's and others self interest to backslide - covers your first question.

And Why re-implement either? - Opens source development often follows the successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it. Linux from Unix, JBoss from Sun's J2EE specs, etc.
If it comes to a choice between one of the dominant webservice standards, Java or .NET, who should open source developers choose?

Re:See - Not in Sun's and others self interest...

[g4dget]

My follow-up Not in Sun's and others self interest to backslide [slashdot.org] - covers your first question.

It's not a question. I have probably been in this business a little longer than you and corporate policies can change in an instant, whether you think it's in their interest or not. In fact, Sun has built almost their entire software strategy on taking free software and making it proprietary--why would they stop now?

Opens source development often follows the successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it.

Java was a mediocre technical compromise when it started out, and instead of improving it, as Sun has promised, they have essentially frozen it. What they have spent their time on is chasing one pipe dream after another of enterprise infrastructure world domination. Sorry, the technology isn't even up to that.

If it comes to a choice between one of the dominant webservice standards,Java or
.NET, who should open source developers choose? Neither. Both are technically poor, bloated, proprietary, and they are not even well-defined "standards". We can do better in the open source community.

Wrong

[TheAncientHacker]

C# was developed in house. Some of the concepts behind CLI and CLR were pre-existing but even then only parts. After all, UCSD p-System predates MS-DOS and it wasn't the first.

Successful Negotiating Strategy 4 Free&Open So

[NZheretic]

g4dget wrote: "If you think that a statement of intent on a web page somewhere is a legally binding contract..."
If the Apache foundation lawyers have a signed paper copy of the aformentioned letter, yes.

g4dget wrote: "The open source community should not touch either of them.".
Opens source development often follows the very successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it. It is possible to reimplement standards based on proprietary products but due care should still take place

GNU/Linux is a implementation based on Unix and the Posix standards. Unix was proprietary licensed by AT&T, and early open source BSD386 (what became FreeBSD and NetBSD ) development, which replaced the remaining proprietary AT&T code in BSD, was greatly hampered by threats and lawsuits from AT&T. Early Linux development escaped legal entanglement precisely because the developers took steps to insure no such code mixing with AT&T's source took place. However, this took place before software patents were in widespread use, in fact it was not until 1991 that most software companies took any interest in software patents at all.To quote Bill Gates May 16, 1991 email "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

Does this mean that the open source development community should avoid any and all frameworks and patented methords? NO - There is a better way.

The solution is to start a negotiation "dialog" with all the parties involved, getting them to actually support open source implementations and licensing based on their proprietary products. How? It's not easy but it is possible.
1) Win-Win: demonstrate how it is in there best interest to work with the open source community - using open source developed code to ad value to there own products
2) Reward : Any relatively good behavour, incomparison to other players, reward - say thank you and promote them.
3) Converted partners : When you have made a "convert" to open source, such as IBM and SAP, them to badger other partners into also adopting open source friendly licenses.
4) Comparison : play one against the other, Get Microsoft to open it's .NET spec and patent licensing by continualy comparing them to Sun's terms.

5) Badger, Badger, Badger them with the truth : Long conversations and confontations are tiring but it forces the other side to truly consider the issues.

In the long term, does it work? Yes. With the X Window System, in 1998 the Open Group releases X11R6.4 under restrictive licensing, after months of haggling and bitter arguing, The Open Group rescinded the restrictive licensing. On November 14th of this year, again after months of similar haggling and bitter arguing, the Patent Policy Working Group of the W3C announced the Royalty-Free Patent Policy.

It's ironic, but the open source friendly licensing model actualy bring about a solution to the software patient problem proposed by Bill Gates himself in the same email, patent exchanges - "The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can". Since no company can aparently truly trust the competition in long term relationships, open source friendly licensing provides a methord where competing parties can build upon each others patents.

g4dget wrote: "You think everybody who isn't enamored with Sun must be a Microsoft shill?"
Well, the tactics you employ under the shear weight of contradictory linked evidence is a tactic I find often applied by members of the Microsoft Shill persuasion. No, I don't work for Sun, IBM or any other vendor in the IT industry, but I do admire and promote postive behavour when I see it.

Source vs binary resource

[Latent Heat]

It is 6 one, half dozen the other on source vs binary: automatic source clutters up the source (yeah, yeah, toggle outlining) while Delphi's binary is this mystery meat hidden underneath the sauce.

There is one big advantage to Delphi's binary approach. The interpretation of that binary resource is in the actual widget class itself, so if you knew which methods to override, you can customize how that binary resource is written at design time and read back in when the thing runs. Overriding Delphi's GetChildren and GetChildOwner and you can go to town making widgets containing lists of Designer-accessible widgets.

You can do the same thing in C#/.NET to render configurable collection widgets into code, but it you have to create your own collection classes by overriding gobs of methods and it doesn't do quite what you want, and to customize further you have to get into the code-generation API (ew, gross!).

C# is OK but Delphi rules.

Parrot: the dedicated mops and life engine

[Anonymous Coward]

How long has work been going on with Parrot? 18 months? What do they have to show for it? Can it run anything besides life and mops?
Parrot's progress is lightyears behind Mono or DotGNU which were started at the same time.
All this endless bickering over micro-details has driven away potential Parrot developers in droves to other projects.
Without developer mindshare Parrot will be doomed to be a flightless bird.

Re:Parrot: the dedicated mops and life engine

[karlm]

Parrot is a 32-register VM (32 registers of each of 3 types), so you should se significant performance increases over almost all of the VMs out there when running on a decently modern ISA (Itanium, PPC, Alpha, PPC, MIPS, and to some extent x86-64). Remember that the Mono and .NET people are more or less copying the design of the JVM while the Parrot design is completely different from (AFAIK) anything designed before.

Stack-based VMs are much easier to create, but generate a lot more overhead in the JITs. (See Ken Thompson's paper on the DIS VM from the Bell Labs website.) Bickering is bad, but they really want to get it right. You forget, St. Larry has a huge community behind him.

Now,I wish they'd make an ultra-lightweight memory machine VM and implement higher level VM extensions using the VM code itself. All of these higher-level VMs force thier own object models on the code. Perl, Python, etc. get thier object and calling models mangled to be C#-like in order to run on the CIL. Automagic memory management and pointer safety are wonderful things, but stuffing round pegs (Python objects) into square holes (C# objects) doesn't help anyone. I can definately see making seperate sets of registers for pointers and non-pointers (address spaces for mempry machines) and having pointer arithmetic functions cause inlining of helper functions instead of directly manipulating pointers, depending on CPU state. This would allow you per-thread enforcement of arbitrary memory management/object models. If you didn't want pointer safety, etc., it would run blazingly fast. HP had a project called Dynamo where they made a JIT VM that took in PA-RISC object code as its "byte code". On actual PA-RISC hardware, it usually ran very close to native speed, and in some cases exceeded native speed through heavy use of runtime optimization in the critical sections of code.

Anyway, my point is that on architectures with many registers, stack-based VMs are not the way to go for fast JITs. I applaud the Parrot people for taking on such a difficult task. Hopefully we'll see performance payoffs, particularly on non-ia32 machines.

Re:Parrot: the dedicated mops and life engine

[Elian]

What, you mean besides two working BASIC interpreters, a Scheme implementation, Befunge-93, Brainfuck, and a partial perl 6 implementation? (Partial because the spec's not done) Nope, nothing at all to show for the work... ;-P

Corporate work

[alext]

This is an excellent step forward for Microsoft on the desktop. As corporations begin to adopt Linux servers, Microsoft software will be able to dominate rather than being left out in the cold.

Congratulations to Microsoft for their success in subverting these open source developments.

isn't cloning illegal?

[shish]

Java is bad
MS's java clone is good
GNU's clone of MS's java clone isn't good (yet)

like, huh?

And why was my first title (so.......) filtered out as "too much like ascii art"?

Which means...

[alext]

Shhh... remember that DotGNU and Mono have never specified meaningful objectives - that would allow their success to be measured, and this would affect the hype factor.

Real objectives would concern real value: the portability and interoperability of products/developments that organizations actually use. Better to stick to announcements about how the C# compiler is now self-hosting, or how someone somewhere is thinking about looking into the feasibility of implementing part of some Dotnet library.

A few months ago ISTR making comments like this to Miguel de Icaza. His response? That people once said the same things about Linux. This appears to be how these guys think - Dotnet is some static, open, well-defined, low-level API and that cloning it is a one-off effort that entails no risk ands cedes no control to MS.

Personally I wouldn't touch this stuff with a bargepole.

Most naive post competition, contestant #1

[alext]

You don't say! Moral high ground? I'll certainly raise this at the next XP rollout meeting in my company.

Meanwhile, the rest of us who sup with the devil will be taking long spoons, and praying that Parrot and Kaffe do not fall prey to MS-cloning zombies.

Value vs. Compatibilty

[alext]

You are expressing exactly the mindset of Adobe, Oracle etc. who will also be developing for this platform.

By clearly stating your requirement for a high-level of compatibility, you are exposing the fundamental weakness of Dotnet cloning efforts:

Unlike, say, Java or Python, the value of Dotnet clones is not directly related to their functionality but to their compatibility. Moreover, this relationship is highly disproportionate - even a few incompatibilities can dramatically diminish their value, since users (other developers) will not make the effort to support the small non-MS market if it compromises their main market developments.

The only viable route for open source is for it to be based on an open platform - a platform unencumbered by compatibility with proprietary technologies. This can certainly make use of Dotnet, but it can do so without ceding control to Microsoft.

Re:Successful Negotiating Strategy 4 Free&Open

[g4dget]

If the Apache foundation lawyers have a signed paper copy of the aformentioned letter, yes.

That's a contract between Sun and the Apache foundation, not a contract with anybody else. The license on what Sun ships hasn't changed. Sun's attitude towards "contamination" hasn't changed. Besides, where is the text of that contract? Where are the signed copies?

GNU/Linux is a implementation based on Unix and the Posix standards. Unix was proprietary licensed by AT&T,

But UNIX wasn't patented and AT&T wasn't all that litigious about it (all they wanted was that people honored their copyrights). And POSIX was an open standard, unencumbered by patents. None of that applies to Java (or C#).

Does this mean that the open source development community should avoid any and all frameworks and patented methords?

Indeed, it shouldn't. But it should stay out of the line of fire of two major, greedy, and litigious players.

Well, the tactics you employ under the shear weight of contradictory linked evidence is a tactic I find often applied by members of the Microsoft Shill persuasion. No, I don't work for Sun, IBM or any other vendor in the IT industry, but I do admire and promote postive behavour when I see it.

I do like to promote positive behavior, too. That's why I supported Java and open source strongly during the first few years, when Sun promised to create an open standard, to encourage third party implementations, to improve numerical peformance and type safety, and to open source their implementation. Sun has broken every one of those promises, and the weight of evidence is that Sun is a duplicitous company that is not to be trusted.

Sun, in fact, has a long history of taking open source software and making it proprietary, and that hasn't stopped with Java either. Swing, for example, was also ready to be open sourced (IFC), but Sun took it proprietary. Before that, of course, they built their entire company on BSD UNIX.

Sun is also in trouble as a company, and they have failed to evolve the Java platform technically. This is not a company with which one negotiates or on whose products one builds open source software, in particular since Sun has no technology that is in any way distinguished. In fact, Java has fallen behind technically so badly that it really cannot be recomended anymore.

I don't know whether you are merely clueless or whether you have some stake in Sun, but either way, your arguments don't hold water and the direction you propose for open source is dangerous. We have given Sun more leeway than just about any other company, and they have taken unfair advantage of open source again and again. This should stop now.

Is anyone actually

[voodoo1man]

planning to develop free software with this compiler? I'd be interested in the motivations of the people doing it. Given that there are so many better cross-platform, free software alternatives (Python, Smalltalk, Scheme, CL, etc.) why would anyone want to use .Net?

Re:ASTROTURF

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a fsck-tard. how dare you insult me.

Re:Cool islam caliphate of death terrorist killer

[Anonymous Coward]

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Last Post!

[alpg]

I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

Last Post!

[alpg]

It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward
the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the
case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by
crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...