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Mono Poises to Take Over the Linux Desktop

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the and-do-it-with-style dept.

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."

5 of 925 comments (clear)

  1. MonoDevelop IDE by gmajor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Doesn't the Monodevelop IDE look suspiciously like Eclipse?

  2. Re:.NET by Rascasse · · Score: 5, Interesting

    .NET is good because it takes the best from languages that are already in existence. It's not like there is anything revolutionary in C# that isn't in any other language out there. I used to be stuck in this PC-centric view of the world. Imagine my surprise when I bought a Mac and realized that NeXT had fantastic things like Internet-enabled Distributed Objects available long before much of the world even knew what a web browser was. Yes, C# is good. But the only people that I know that have been blown away by it are those that didn't stray far from Microsoft solutions and were never exposed to tools available from other vendors. Welcome to what much of the rest of the world had available to them in the form of Java since the late 1990s. And before the fanboys come out - yes I know that C# actually improves on some of Java's deficiencies. But I do take issue with the assertion that C# was made possible thanks only in part to a concerted MS R&D effort. It wasn't.

  3. Parrot/Perl6 by Freedom+Bug · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IMO, I think Parrot will become the .NET equivalent in the open source world: a language independent VM and a huge standard library. I can't wait to have access to CPAN from my Python programs.

    Sure, C# is a lot nicer than C, but Python & Ruby are a lot nicer than C#. If you're going to give up the predictability of C/C++ for a VM, garbage collection, et cetera, why not go all the way up to dynamic execution?

    Bryan

  4. Re:c is dead... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Indeed. Since most damned operating systems are written in C I don't think we'll exactly see it go away anytime soon.


    Operating systems is where C comes from, and vice versa.


    (Yeah, whatever, I'm a C geek. To me, and array of pointers to functions returning pointers to arrays of characters seems like a damned fine idea! =)


    Back in my day, we jusy wrote straight to the registers on the device and we were glad! Damned punk kids.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  5. One thing you need to know about DeIcaza.. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 5, Interesting



    Hmm.

    The initiative it takes to back-engineer the .Net frame work, while admirable, is a wee bit misguided, i'd say. You have to understand what's really at play here.

    The whole idea of chasing after a proprietary standard like .Net (and treating the development process like some open source cat-and-mouse game) is pointless. It accomplishes nothing but an at-best "acceptable" knock-off.

    If Microsoft doesn't want the .Net framework available on other platforms, they're not going to make it available. Then on the other hand, if they find it's to their benefit to do so, they will make it available. It's as simple as that. Suppose you actually make it to the point where you have an equivalent framework to offer. Surprise, Microsoft releases .Net for Unix, and the entire effort is null and void. Your pride and joy is now a footnote, and a deprecated one at that. Realistically, how many people are going to feel sorry for someone who's stance reads, "Damn those fuckers in Redmond for making their framework available in Unix!" ?

    Unfortunately, Miguel seems to have a fairly long track record with this sort of Microsoft-chasing. You can run along and play catch-up all you like with other technologies, but, it'll be just like it is with Gnome ---- With Gnome, you're guaranteed nothing better than a perpetual second place finish. Gnome amounts to a Windows wanna-be, instead of a Windows-killer, when it didn't have to be that way. Miguel made it that way.

    Look...If you HAVE the talent to do something better, for God's sake, do it. Don't waste your time (and other peoples time) churning out flea market knock-offs of worthwhile products. I'm certainly no fan of Microsoft..I just call it like I see it. .Net needs not the taint of open-source muckery.

    --
    Bowie J. Poag