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.Net On Lego Mindstorm
troop23 writes "A blog posting by Benjamin J. J. Voigt says this "The University of Potsdam has a project to develop a .NET VM for the Lego Mindstorms system. Lego Mindstorms just got a higher priority on my shopping list!" While the thought of using .Net to program Lego Mindstorms may not be palatable, having a mainstream dev environment sure is." Perhaps Mono would work just as well.
Well there already are C/C++ compilers for Lego mindstorms, so writing a new one wouldn't add that much. Writing a .net VM however fulfills a new purpose. Whether it's really necessary or ideal is another argument, but it definitely provides more new functionality than writing another C compiler would.
Anyways, while you're right a VM is less than ideal for embedded systems, there are embedded Java VMs that people use and to a lesser extent there are people that use python and perl in embedded systems. Sometime it just makes sense to choose a solution that requires more computing power because it allows you to program faster. In fact, I think if there's any case of an embedded system where a VM isn't a big deal it would be one that's just for fun, not production, that is, the exact market of lego mindstorms. I mean, it's really a lot like Basic stamp microcontrollers. It doesn't make sense to build a product around them, but if you're just messing around with stuff there are plenty of people who don't mind paying more so that they can write their code quicker.
Too bad Sun can't produce cross-platform compatibility even within their own product line. For example, mobile devices use J2ME while PCs use the J2SE framework.
You will find a lot of the J2ME and J2SE are not binary compatible and barely source compatible if you try to port the simplest app. The "Write once, run anywhere" argument doesn't really stand up here IMHO.
Do you think those Java capable mobile phones have the full blown Java API on them, and run standard non-preverified class files?