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Microsoft Developers Respond To .NET Criticism
bonch writes "Richard Grimes of Dr. Dobbs Journal wrote an article entitled Mr. Grimes' Farewell, in which he discusses what he feels are inherent flaws in .NET, and how he is abandoning his .NET column. Grimes argues that .NET is merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls (Avalon uses message functions that date back to 16-bit Windows), that Microsoft has abandoned confidence in both .NET and sales of Longhorn, and that the framework itself is too large and poorly implemented, most of it ported from past APIs like WFC and VB. Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's Visual C# Project Manager, has responded in his blog. Richard Grimes appears in the comments to defend his criticism, referencing first-hand disassembly of .NET APIs using ildasm. Scott Swigart has also responded to the criticism of Visual Basic .NET. Apparently, Mr. Grimes struck some nerves."
Of course it is. That's called functional programming!
I suggest you take some time to read up on functional programming.
(Disclaimer: I know what you're meaning to say, I'm merely pointing out that the term you used isn't what you think it is.)
"So should Firefox. They are simply papering over the enourmous cracks and legacy rubbish that is Netscape 4.0."
The Mozilla project did do a massive rewrite of the original Netscape code.
Umm .. the .Net library has a namespace called System.Windows which contains all the windows-specific functionality (COM, System.Windows.Forms, etc).
.Net is undeniably built with Windows in mind, but it's hardly 'win32-based'.
Nobody is forced to use this namespace, nor can we blame MS for offering Windows-only functionality.
The runtime runs just fine on any platform (Rotor and Mono show this) and the library is clearly devided between Windows libs and 'common' libs like XML, SOAP, HTTP, etc.
There are also plenty third party libraries available to enable platform independence. (GTK#, WX#, etc.)
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
I think it's valid in the C99 specs, which is the current standard for the C language.
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Java is not open. C# and the CLR are. They are ECMA standards.
I'm getting tired of correcting people about this, but I can't help myself. C# and the CLR ARE NOT OPEN. An organization has embraced them in their list of standards. That does not mean they can be changed by anyone and still be a standard. They are not documented any better or worse then Java and their implementations do not have to be open.
The only difference between these things being standards is that Microsoft can't change the interfaces and say they comply with the standard. Meanwhile Java can be changed at any time by Sun.
And if you still want to call the CLR open then don't forget many parts are patented. So having it as an "open" standard is irrelevant when you can easily be sued by its creator for using it.
Developers: We can use your help.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use C#, but here are some of the reasons I continue to use Java: