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Mono 2.8 Released
mallumax writes "A new veriosn of Mono(2.8) has been released: Mono has now integrated SourceGear's webservice enhancements, and there has been a lot of improvement in XML, serialization and web services. Other features are new thread locking and ahead-of-time compiler optimisations. Check out the Mono website for more details." Congratulations are in order for the Mono team as well -- SourceGear was their first customer.
The version number is 0.28, not 2.8.
Microsoft has built in a way to access the underlying Win32 API into .NET. Thus any .NET application that uses this functionality will never run under mono (except if wine can handle all the calls).
But that doesn't mean that mono is useless, far from it. MS' .NET was clearly created as a competitor to the java virtual machine. Mono is just another competitor to java and MS .NET as well. And the most important point is that it is fully free.
The open source communities have largely embraced java even though sun still imposes some restrictions through licensing. This has had a large negative effect on the spread of some java technologies (like JAI or java3D not being available on macOS).
Mono gives the open source communities a 2nd generation virtual machine design to call it's own. Forget about microsoft's .NET, view mono as a solution in and of itself and it looks very interesting.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
.NET is a FRAMEWORK, not a VM. Just like J2EE is.
And it was a way for Microsoft to get rid of Win32 API progressively.
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
Congratulations.
My favorites are ruby and C#/.net and they compliment eachother so well.
I'm curious, care to explain how these languages compliment each other??
I think Mono is the most important open source project second only to linux, because it will make the most advanced software platform in existence available for free on unix and windows.
Saying .NET is the most advance software platform in existence does not magically make it so. I can come after and say "no, you wrong, Java is the most advance platform", and we would have gotten absolutely nowhere.
I disagree with your assertion, by the way. And I have a few hundred JSRs at JCP.org to back me up.
Most of Java's development is done in the open. Which means tool developers have a heads up on what changes are coming and even have a say in it too boot.
It is also interesting that it is a useful tool for identifying those among us that are zealots and not software idealists. :-)
(i)I don't think that Mono makes much sense currently because it's a implementation of a development platform specifically designed to increase Microsoft's market share at the expense of everyone else.
(ii)Because Mono does not have any say in the spec it is implementing *and* the writer of the spec is historically hostile.
If that makes me some type of "zealot", I'll accept my title :)
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
most advanced software platform in existence
OK, I'll bite. :) Most advanced platform in existence? Isn't that a bit lofty? C#/.Net can be described, accurately, as Microsoft's answer to J2EE. While I'm a pragmatist about this and I find things to admire and things to dislike about both platforms, history still favors J2EE as the better platform.
If Java were just Sun, then .NET would probably quickly become a superior platform. I hate to say this. I like Sun, I dislike Microsoft. But I have to be honest with what I see. However, Java is not just Sun. There is a huge array of open source software for Java. Just tour the Apache software web site and the enormous variety of Java software available so developers don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Microsoft is often better at making software easier to use. They are often better at making software to make making GUI's easy. They are often better at making certain kinds of tools and certain kinds of integration between products.
But to those who think that Open Source is all about copying what others innovate (I'm not accusing anyone in this discussion of that), there are a great many J2SE and J2EE projects out there that disprove that straw man. (I don't know enought about J2ME to speak intelligently.)
In addition to Apache, check out Exolab. These are just a couple of the organizations creating open source J2SE and J2EE solutions. The existence of these sorts of organizations, these projects, brings great power and maturity to Java that .NET doesn't yet have.
I'm learning .NET stuff because I'm pragmatic and there are indeed some very nice features it has. One is the ability to link many languages in a native way rather than having to go through JNI. (shudder)
All of this to say that I have to question not only calling any software platform the "most advanced software platform in existence," but especially the .NET platform which has not yet caught up to J2EE in functionality. Not for web projects at any rate.
at best, mono will be a never ending catch-up game... always having to tweak itself to stay MS compatible... plus, mono will need to be able to handle all the win32 api calls, so that means WINE needs a lot more development before it will be a formitable opponent to .net
.net
a native port would be huge, but Bill would never give Linux that much power... here is hoping Apple gets a native port of