Microsoft Common Language Runtime To Be Cross-Platform

axlrosen alerts us to a Microsoft sleeper announcement from Mix07: a version of its Common Language Runtime will be available cross-platform. The Core CLR shows up as part of the Silverlight SDK that Redmond is open sourcing. From the blog posting: "The biggest Mix '07 announcement made on opening day of this week's show was one that Microsoft didn't call out in any of its own press releases: Microsoft is making a version of its Common Language Runtime available cross-platform. The CLR is the heart of Microsoft's .Net Framework programming model. So, by association, the .Net Framework isn't just for Windows any more."

Comments

"Cross platform"

[brennanw]

Now supporting XP and Vista!

Re:"Cross platform"

[Marcion]

"Silverlight will plug into Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Safari browsers, meaning the slimmed-down CLR will run on these platforms, as well."

When a browser became a platform I'm not sure, when they started handing out the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid I suppose. It doesn't mention Linux so I reckon they mean Firefox on Windows.

Re:"Cross platform"

[rockmuelle]

Whoa there... just like 'Open' has other meanings that don't imply 'Open Source', cross-platform has many interpretations. The XNA claim to be cross-platform is definitely a valid one, particularly when you consider that the X-Box 360 is a PowerPC architecture and Windows XP and Vista are primarily run on x86 chips. If single development environment that can not only target three versions of an OS, but also target multiple processor architectures isn't cross platform, then I'm not sure what is.

-Chris

Me? Cynical? Never.

[AKAImBatman]

The Core CLR shows up as part of the Silverlight SDK that Redmond is open sourcing.

That's great. Now if Microsoft would actually implement a few web standards (rather than spewing out more Microsoft "standards") I might actually trust them. As it happens, though, I don't. Internet Explorer has the absolute worst track record of all the modern web browsers. It's fairly straight forward to tune Javascript/DOM code to run in Mozilla, Opera, and Safari. But Internet Explorer? Meh. Let's just say that it adds another 30-50% to the project time.

Now Microsoft wants to broadcast their wonderful multimedia technology that will enhance the web, be cross-platform, show cool multimedia-type stuff that we can already do with SVG or Canvas. Woohoo. Whoopdedoo. Wow.

Not.

This smacks of yet another Microsoft embrace, extend, and extinguish stratgey. "Yeah, guys. Come on in. Here's the Silverlight plugin which works on Macs. We're going to be real buds with these Mac peoples! We're even porting a teeny bit of the CLR (ed: And you thought Java was browser bloat?) to make our XAML/Avalon/WPF technology work for you guys. Oh, did we mention that Macs are kind of slow? (ed: They are now!)"

Next version: "We haven't seen enough customers demand support for the Mac. So we're dropping the plugin for that platform and adding some amazing new features to the Windows version." *FWHHOOOSH* Extinguished.

If Microsoft really wanted to compete, they'd be the first to implement the OpenGL API for the Canvas tag that the WHATWG has been working on. Oh, but wait! That wouldn't be Window-y enough. It would have to be the DirectX API through Javascript, dontchaknow. :-/

Re:Me? Cynical? Never.

[AKAImBatman]

Dude. CANVAS. Hello?

Microsoft pulled the wool over your eyes. They were showing you a DOM app that needed to modify the rendering tree in order to make a move. This is similar to a 3D Scene Graph, but without the hardware acceleration. When Microsoft showed you the Silverlight app, they were showing you a hardware-accelerated drawing program. The very purpose for which Canvas was created.

As for the AI speed (assuming that the performance issues weren't entirely being caused by the DOM manipulations), Silverlight still uses Javascript for scripting. If it can run so much faster in their CLR scripting why don't they use their new Javascript engine in Internet Explorer?

In case you think I'm joking, that is exactly what Mozilla is doing with their new Tamarin engine. The new engine is faster and more feature rich, ergo it's being integrated into the browser platform. To make matters even more interesting, Mozilla and Adobe are sharing the development of the engine, so that they can both use it. Mozilla in the browser, Adobe in Flash.

I'm sorry. Microsoft is pulling a fast one on you. There is no need for Silverlight other than to lock you into Microsoft technology.

Be afraid, bitches....

[LibertineR]

If a lot of you, previously unexposed to the CLR gain access to it, you will discover that it is not the crap that so many of you have read it to be.

From denial, to grudging acceptance, to surprised admiration, is how the process works, and whether you hate Microsoft or not, a few months playing with C# usually results in the comment "Damm, why didnt they do this with Java?"

The Borg isnt dead, they have only been regenerating. Prepare to modulate shield frequencies, because they are coming.......

Re:Be afraid, bitches....

[UnknowingFool]

From denial, to grudging acceptance, to surprised admiration, is how the process works, and whether you hate Microsoft or not, a few months playing with C# usually results in the comment "Damm, why didnt they do this with Java?"

After playing with C# for a few months, the answer I came up with is that C# happened after Java and (I would hope) improve upon Java in some ways. But I stopped using it because of a few reasons. The first of which was the cross platform problem. While Java wasn't open source at the time, it worked on a lot of different platforms. At best you could implement .NET with Mono but there was no guarantee that a change by MS would not negate the hard work of the Mono team. The second reasons is that MS has always been long on promises about technology and short on execution. I'm content to let some else be the guinea pig.

Parent not trolling

[metamatic]

That's exactly what Microsoft did with ActiveX. They pushed ActiveX as cross-platform, delivering an ActiveX SDK for the Mac and supporting ActiveX components in IE.

Then after a while, they dropped ActiveX support, saying it was too much effort to make it work on OS X.

Then after a while longer, they dropped IE too.

Same with WMV. Seen Windows Media Player for the Mac? No? That's because they dropped it a while back, and killed all support for DRM-protected Windows Media on the Mac. (Instead they suggest that people use a third party QuickTime plugin that only handles unprotected WMV.)

Jeez, lots of Microsoft fanboys or astroturfers moderating today.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately neither of them actually knows what they are talking about.

For starters, a.k.a. why Chester K doesn't know what he's talking about, at MIX they showed JavaScript in the browser against C# in Silverlight v1.1 - not C# in JavaScript. The speed comparisons are correct.

why AKAIAmBatman is wrong is because this is absolutely not about the performance of rendering. The setup here is that you have one app, with whatever that infrastructure is running in, delegating to the player code. The player code being C#, JavaScript, or a human. This is how you typically do chess games and no surprise it's how they did it here. Therefore the JavaScript is doing no rendering of any kind. That is unless the game was implemented using JS, but even if it was it doesn't matter. The idea is to give each player 1 second to calculate and they give you the best move and how many calculations done. This is merely a measure of raw computational power: calls, either some array lookups, and simple math (potentially bitwise arithmetic, potentially not depending upon the implementation). Finally they used the same algorithm just implemented in the two different languages.

And because Chester K was misinformed this populates down into AKAIAmBatman's comments where things go wrong. The Tamarin engine has nothing on this. ActionScript has nothing on this. What we're talking about is approaching near native code speed in the browser. JavaScript, no matter what, just isn't going to get there and still be JavaScript. It's way too dynamic. Maybe you can do some whole program analysis but even that is going to be tough. It seems the goal for Tamarin is only a 10x improvement (http://simonwillison.net/2006/Nov/9/tamarin/) if you look at the source code. That means that C# will still be 1000 times faster than the improved Tamarin engine. It's just a fact - JavaScript sucks.