Novell Presents Mono Roadmap
H0ek writes "Seems Mono is still moving along in spite of the Novell purchase. They present a nicely comprehensive roadmap. You can read the official Novell press release if you're into that kind of nonsense. All I can say is, go Miguel! Don't let the Man get you down!"
Contrary to what the poster seems to think, Mono is becoming an important part of of Novell's strategy. Very shortly after Novell bought Ximian, its developers started showing up on the Mono lists and becoming involved in the community--without trying to exert any type of control. They even appear to have already started some important projects using Mono.
I've really enjoyed using C#, I definetly recommend taking some time to learn it. Effort is underway to implement S.W.F, but GTK# is already works cross platform. With Glade and the nicely designed Glade# stuff, using GTK# is a pleasure.
As for web development, alot of work is going into making Mono a robust web development tool. It's still in the early stages, though. Haven't used it myself yet, but Ximian is comfortable enough with it to already be dog fooding.
It [C#] is complete enough that Java(tm) is including features that already exist in C# in 1.5 - including enums, attributes, and iterator-aware looping.
Otherwise, from a syntax standpoint, C# is pretty roughly equivilant to Java(tm). They are both OO languages (no flames about which is more OO, that's a dumb argument) that support single-inheritance, multiple interface implementation, and some component-oriented development paradigms (beans vs properties)
C# is similiarly including more features such as anonymous methods and Generics which made it to 1.5 before C# will get them in 2.0 "Whidbey".
I do serious, production work in both. IMHO, it isn't the language that is differentiating, it's the class libraries and the reach of the underlying platform that dictate the decision to use one vs the other.
For Windows development, C#/.Net has a serious edge.
For cross-platform server applications, Java(tm) is extremely strong.
meh.