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Mono Poises to Take Over the Linux Desktop
Edd Dumbill writes "Miguel de Icaza and the Mono team recently hosted a two day open meeting in Boston. O'Reilly have just published
my report of the meeting. Highlights include
Miguel's view that 'C is dead!' and the Mono approach
to dealing with Microsoft patents on .NET."
I realize that this is an unpopular opinion here on Slashdot, but C# is actually a pretty cool language and the .NET runtime is a promising platform. Microsoft didn't just dream this up overnight... they had a lot of smart people working a long time creating this beast.
It would certainly benefit us to learn about these technologies and leverage them, rather than to unilaterally declare them evil, wrong, stupid, etc. and just bury our heads in the sand and pretend they dont exist.
Aside from being a the primary source of Mediterranean winds, Icaza has apparently forgotten about that whole "Linux" thing that is built on that whole "UNIX" thing that was built using that whole "C" thing. I applaud his salesmanship. I deplore his view that the desktop is equivalent to the operating system.
I realize that this is an unpopular opinion here on Slashdot, but C# is actually a pretty cool language and the .NET runtime is a promising platform. Microsoft didn't just dream this up overnight...
.Net is a nice language with some advancements over Java, but not different enough from Java to make its existence worthwhile. It's just leading to a lot of duplication of effort across the world (like Ant and Nant, or JUnit and NUnit).
Yes, it took at a least a couple of days to copy all the Java libraries and ReCapitalizeMethods,
Seriously though,
Now if they'd come up with something like Haskel# as the primary language (instead of hamstringing other languages and making all of the core libraries Java like) or something really different that actually advanced the field of programming as a whole, then I might be more appreciative But as it is I see the tremendous duplication of effort across the world to do the same things in Java and C#, and it just makes me sad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As it is, I don't want to even attempt to emulate another 'grand MS idea'...especially since there are already superior non-MS systems out there that puts .net to shame. No, I'm not going to cite those systems...do your own research. You'd be surprised.
Die Mono Die!
Yeah, it's crappy. But heck, it's a move in the right direction. I know certain people (cough... slashdotters) are quite protective of the purity of writing unmanaged code.
.NET has trippled my productivity (on the Windows platform) and my approval rating at work has skyrocketed as I have rolled out several solutions on .NET that are stable, solid, and effective.
.NET equivelent (sp?) - cause then I could completely abandon Windows at home. But as long as I can code C# with such RAD success, Linux is going to have catching up to do.
.NET, and Windows Forms (and hell, ASP.NET) is. RAD is so important in the real world, that Linux would only benefit - incredibly - from a .NET like solution.
But that said, I have never developed software more rapidly than in C#.
I really wish that Linux had a stable
I applaud MONO. It's far from ready, but keep going. Keep working. Please - make MONO (or something else) as good as C#,
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Exactly, there will be "kind of" a functional language - which has to use the same libraries everyone else does, which are all just like the Java libraries. So people using this pseudo-functional language will be hard-pressed to really see the advantages of a functional language as you would if you had a real function language with a set of libraries as broad as that offered by Java.
.Net and C# is the perfect vehicle to migrate users of all other languages to C#, not really to make life easier on people who want to work in one of the non-C# languages.
I formed this opinion long ago, just around when C# first came out, when I read an article by one of the founder of Eiffel talking about how Eiffel# would work (I wish I had not lost the link - I can no longer find this article). He saw opportunity at that point to gain new Eiffel programmers. But I saw only a tar baby, where the longer you worked with the system the more you just said "Well, all I'm doing is calling C# libraries with this weird syntax so I might as well make life easier by just using C#".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.Net is the platform in which C# is the closest natural representation of what the bytecode is like. As such, .Net is a vehicle for C# and a distorted reflection of all other languages.
.Net is the VM and C# the language. But as Java has shown, it's not really so easy to keep the two wholly separate. They are interdependent to some extent.
Yes,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is almost no difference between C#/Mono/.NET and Java, but almost no Linux developers write in Java. Check out your distribution's packages and you'll almost see more JVMs than Java apps. And for some reason Linux developers avoid Java like the plague, even though it's got a godzillion features that make everything so much easier (garbage collection, huge consistent class library, security, etc). Put in a GTK or QT library interface instead of the slow and huge Swing (that Smalltalkers foisted on Java) and you're golden -- there's every reason to use Java, especially for applications.
The Linux culture has so far prevented Linux from taking the next step. Just look the (essentially) complete lack of interest in gcj (gcc open-source java). Just look at the slow pace of Mono. It isn't goind to happen anytime soon, unless the Linux app community wakes up and sees the future. Yeah, 10 years from now we'll still be doing manual memory management. Sure...
For the same reason they did it with Java - if it's "write once, run anywhere", then why would you buy Windows licenses? Microsoft (quite naturally) wants everyone to run a Windows server and a Windows client, and having Linux be able to take either role with ease doesn't give them the leverage they need to continue their marketshare.
Why don't you use Java?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
C is inferior, yes. It's hardly dead though.
I think C deserves a little more respect than a blanket comment like this.
We still have assembly languages today for several reasons, even though it's been "dead" since the 80's. Driver writers, compiler writers, and high performance inner-loops of scientific apps NEED snippets of assembly.
Thanks to the design goal of c (as the paint on the metal), you can now program in mixed c/assembly and thus never have to actually write anything in raw assembly files anymore. But you still write with the intention of generating specific sections of assembly.
The people that write c are those that are resource conscious. I am not aware of ANY other language that is allows resource management as well as C. "performance" is just one resource, and I know many argue that JIT's counter-balance the performance advantages of optimized c. I still refuse to belive JIT's have ever approached -O3 performance, but am willing to concede that a well written VM app can perform acceptibly.
ButMemory is another key resource management position that sometimes requires hard computer science to derive workable solutions.. When you abstract how resources are utilized (via a VM), then it negates the value of such hard computer science. Note that this ONLY applies to a particular problem space. Though, a non-trivial problem space to be sure.
The point is thus that the classic paradigm of "the right tool for the job" is essential here. There are MANY problems that are best done with low level, very concise languages like c. Most OS components, VMs, or fast-duty-cycle applications should very well have core work done in c/assembly.
The obvious other end of the stick is managing large amounts of code, for which assembly need not apply, and c is indeed becoming a distant memory as I think you are implying. Yes, web-services and many such fast-to-deploy applications transcend c, but don't be too quick to write-off the value in having a generation of computer scientists that are not well enough versed at writing low level applications.
-Michael
I respect Miguel, but I think he seriously underestimates the risk posed by MSFT's patents in this area. Quoth the article:
Microsoft has granted a license to use this technology under so-called "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.
"Reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) does not imply "free". RAND was the proposed licensing requirement for W3C patents that was howled down by the community.
Given that MSFT is willing to finance SCO to use arguably illegal tactics to destabilise and discredit free software, who would expect that they are above enforcing a small fee for every patent needed to implement Mono? They needn't do this immediately, in fact it is in their interest to wait until the technology is widely adopted, so they can slug everyone at the same time. Note that the usual legal defences against "submarine patents" won't work either if the terms have been disclosed to be RAND all along.
Obviously this guy has never been in an Engineering College lately. We are still learning C. Not C++, Not C#, Not Java, C. As in where you have to declare all your variables at the very beginning and can't declare them anywhere else. It's how we program microprocessors (among other things) in something other than assembly. And I highly doubt they will make a Java compiler for PICs, Motorolla HC11 and HC12's and various other devices any time soon. Besides, I here places are still looking for COBOL and FORTRAN programmers. Seeing as how those two are still here, C still has a long way to go before the white lillies come around.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
A man is a good programmer or he is not a good programmer. He is not "a good C++ programmer". Whether he has learnt some esoteric nuance of a language does not make him a good or bad programmer. A particular language is just an interface to the act of programming, like a GUI is an interface to the act of using, and if it does something surprising, the problem is likely with the language, not the developer.
Seriously dude, that is most definitely not a straightforward question. It's carefully designed to test your understanding of some of the subtle tricks and traps of C++. And one of the "tricks" it uses to mislead you has nothing to do with inheritance, rather with implicit casting.
I must admit I got tripped up on it though, mainly because I'd forgotten the distinction between hiding and overriding. The question is nasty, ugly, and was intended to be as confusing and tricky as possible... and any programmer that writes code like that (especially something involving changing the default value of a parameter for an overriden method) ought to be shot.
BTW, if you're asking questions out of GOTW as interview questions, I can only say that that's pretty nasty - except perhaps as a final round question for some of the really cocky smart-arse types :-). Or if you're looking for a seriously hard-core C++ expert, in which case you'd probably expect him/her to have read all of GOTW and Sutter's books and know all the answers off by heart anyway.
There's certainly a depressing number of such people about - though nowadays they're mainly moving into Java, a language better suited to their limitati^Wcapabilities. And I say "Hooray!" to that :).
Pete (who has for the last two months been maintaining/debugging/adding features to a 1998-era MSVC6 project, written by a guy who really had no idea about C++. Sigh.)