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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!"
Novell bought Ximian as much for Mono as anything else. This is a key part of Novell's future, I hardly think they are publishing the roadmap "in spite of the Novell purchase".
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
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.
All of the MS products are being rewritten to be based on .Net. ISVs are being pushed towards .Net. In the case of VB developers, they simply don;t have a choice. For C++ developers, MS is constantly selling us the manageed C++ mantra. Even game developers are getting the .NEt pitch.
If Mono works, then Microsofts own products, those of independent system developers and popular games will all be just as good on Linux, OSX, etc. as they will be on Windows. That should make MS very nervous. Go Miguel!
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
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.
So okay, does anybody know how well it runs on Dragonfly?
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.
Yeah, I know, big surprise.
.NET. The response was "We don't work with Linux companies, I'll get you a cab" and that was that.
A couple of years ago I visited MS in Redmond to see if there was some way my then company could work with MS. We had a very encouraging two hour discussion and I was told that MS would very much like to work with us. I had demo'd our software on a Linux laptop running KDE (so I don't think they noticed it wasn't Windows) and mentioned that as we were a Linux based company we would use Mono to integrate with
While it is clear that they don't like Linux, I think it is also apparent that they will not condone anyone using Linux/Mono as a development platform instead of Windows/.NET and they will very obviously move to kill it by incompatibility as soon as it shows the slightest chance of being a threat.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
.NET is very Windows-UNspecific, not at all what you would expect from MS. It has some Microsoft specific stuff, (eg. accessing windows registry) but that is generally relegated to a separate "Microsoft" namespace.
.NET is all about Windows Forms. It is not. For me, that is the least interesting aspect. You can write console applications, or server deamons, or web services, or DLLs for re-use by multiple UIs.
.NET has a large amount of support, from the people who write software for Microsoft platforms. I assure you, there are very many.
.NET has to be very important to my career. And Mono is too, because it opens up a whole new market for my MS-centric skills - suddenly, I have a chance of telling management that they are no longer tied to MS because their business relies on my Windows program. And that is very exciting.
.NET, and at some point in the future it may become worth your while.
In addition, you seem to think that
Like Java, C# is here NOW, and C# developers are here now. As are VB.NET developers, as fast as they can convince their management to change. As a platform,
For myself, I develop specifically for Windows, and
If you are a Java specialist, there is really no need to stray, for now. However, Microsoft will do everything it can to make it easier and easier for you to migrate your skills to
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
does ASP.NET not suck as bad as ASP under IIS used to?
Nope. it really does not suck. It aint perfect, but damn it's a couple orders of magnitude better than ASP.
I never really liked the 'let's put our code in our pages' thing
Neither did I, or many people, for that matter. That is why a lot of serious developers compiled COM components to service requests. Now, asp.net is a step further in that direction by explicitly (depending on the way you develop) separating logic from presentation via MyPage.aspx files (presentation) vs MyPage.aspx.cs files (logic). Of course, as in Java(tm), you CAN do it wrong/easy by glomming everything into your aspx pages. Bad programmer! No donught!
meh.
Mono is an open source project, and Steve Ballmer says open source doesn't have roadmaps.
I believe everything Steve and Bill tell me, so this "roadmap" obviously doesn't exist.
ASP.NET is definitely ahead of vanilla ASP. It has separated code from display, which is good. It has also added web controls, which are very very powerful. It is also (mostly) compiled, which adds speed.
However, it is still lacking in several areas:
* lack of built-in page templating mechanism
* datagrids are latebound (and possibly interpreted)
* CSS support in Visual Studio is abysmal
* the style of ASP.NET is "lots of custom pages" - it does not encourage large maintainable web sites.
All in all, it is very "VB" - nice and easy to create something simple, but it takes some ingenuity to create a larger, maintainable product.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain