Visual Basic on GNU/Linux

jeevesbond writes "The Mono Project announced that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler that will enable software developers who use Microsoft Visual Basic to run their applications on any platform that supports Mono, such as Linux, without any code modifications."

Comments

Patents

[JoshJ]

See also: "Ballmer repeats threats against Linux" thread below.

Re:Terrific

[mr_sas]

as long as the libraries are written in .net or are cross platform it is not an issue. Consider that for web apps for example there is not really a need for any non-.net libraries in most cases.

Re:OS X Intel?

[miguel]

Yes, this does run on OSX Intel.

Our compiler and runtime are written entirely in portable CIL code that later gets translated into native code on each platform by the Mono JIT.

I believe you are referring to Microsoft's Visual Basic for applications (which is what Office uses) and which is an older version of the language which they are unable to port on its current shape (their stuff was an older version of the compiler that predated the CIL bytecodes).

Miguel

Re:I don't get it

[miguel]

We have been able to run code compiled with Microsoft Visual Basic for a very long time (1.0 was supported for a few years with the old runtime, and 2.0 has been supported for a few months with our new runtime).

But there were a few problems, ASP.NET for example would requite a compiler on the host to compile VB.NET-based ASP.NET pages. ASP.NET works by translating special commands and tags into your language and mixing your code with the resulting output with a technology called "CodeDOM".

So this particular scenario (ASP.NET with VB) was not supported due to the lack of a compiler.

This also allows Windows developers to do their work on Linux directly without having to use two machines to develop.

Miguel.

Re:Worrying trend...

[miguel]

Either the quote is wrong, or I had was distracted when I said so.

The runtime was developed entirely by Mainsoft, with some help from us in a few areas. Microsoft was not involved in this process, am sorry for the miss-understanding.

The runtime and compiler were pretty much done before I was aware of any discussions between Novell and Microsoft. The major change since September has been that the compiler became self-hosting on Linux (compiles itself, and compiles its own runtime) and that we have had a chance to go from a research project to a product (of course, we will keep improving it)

Miguel.

Re:OS X Intel?

[m0rph3us0]

Apparently you've managed to miss the past 15 years of processor development. The 486 was the last processor to actually execute x86 instructions. Since then all intel x86 processors run an x86 virtual machine on a RISC CPU.

So, yes, both C++ and Fortran share the x86 VM. Also, C# shares the x86 VM because CLI bytecode is never executed, only x86 code. It just delays the compile to x86 til runtime.

Re:OS X Intel?

[smbarbour]

Which is why (according to the article) the majority of .NET developers use VB.NET exclusively.

Though often disparaged by developers, Visual Basic remains one of the world's most commonly used programming languages. According to Forrester Research, 37 percent of enterprises use Microsoft Visual Basic.NET for development and maintenance of their in-house applications. What's more, among .NET developers, 59 percent use Visual Basic.NET as their only programming language. Thus, as of 2006, at least 20 percent of all in-house business programs were still being written in Basic, according to the market analyst firm.

Sure, there might be a lot of programmers that came to it, but among .NET developers they are in the minority.

The road analogy is poor though. Programming languages don't have a "capacity" for the number of users.