Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Portable

Michelle Meyers writes "Just days before Microsoft claimed to be making parts of the .NET CLR "available" to other platforms, NeoSmart Technologies had published an article bemoaning and blasting Microsoft's abuse of it's developers by pretending .NET was a true cross-platform framework when they're doing everything in their power to stop it from being just that. Of interest is NeoSmart's analysis of how Microsoft has no problem making certain portions of .NET available to Mac users — just so long as its distributed under an "open source" license that forbids any and all use of the code except for educational purposes — yet are terrified of the very thought of .NET being available to *nix users, even if that's to the benefit of .NET developers everywhere. Even more interesting is one of the comments on that article linking to legal documents in which Microsoft employees discuss the (im)possibility of creating a cross-platform code and UI framework, years before the .NET project even started!"

Comments

Does it matter?

[brennanw]

There's no point in making a marketing sleight of hand portable to other platforms, is there?

Maybe it's changed in the last few years, but when Microsoft first started talking about "dot net" the only thing I could figure was that they didn't really know what it was going to do -- and four years after it had been announced it didn't really seem as if that had changed.

Maybe it's changed since then... it's been three years since the last time I paid any attention to it...

Re:Does it matter?

[eln]

I always figured the whole "cross-platform" marketspeak was just a ploy to take some of the wind out of Java's sails. MS wanted people to stop jumping on the Java bandwagon and start jumping on the .NET bandwagon, so they made it sound like .NET was (or would be in the future) more widely usable than it is.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, I'm no fan of .NET, but the Help Desk webcomic isn't exactly the best source for objective and serious assessments of Microsoft products. Several programming languages have been built for .NET and programs that are built with these will generally require the .NET runtime to run. Although this is irrelevant to the well-definedness of the concept, most people tend to acknowledge that these languages, perhaps C# in particular, are far better than Microsoft's earlier offerings along these lines, although they may of course not be everyone's cup of tea for various reasons including but not limited to their being tied to a closed system and their being generally non-cross-platform.

You may not like the framework, but there is no longer any confusion about what .NET is. You'll notice that the comic you linked to was from 2004.

Re:Does it matter?

[errxn]

...the Help Desk webcomic isn't exactly the best source for objective and serious assessments of Microsoft products Neither is Slashdot, for that matter.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

What .net is now is completely different from the vast swarm of swirling spin and angry buzzing buzzwords that poured forth from Microsoft when that concept was spawned, half-formed from the bowels of that beast. It was going to revolutionize the world, one-up .mac on the personal services side while providing corporate services that scaled to millions of users and provide a synergistic end-to-end mashup of all business processes with qualitative and quantitative analysis of everything at once. dotnet was going to bring the ultimate in efficiency and productivity to every one of your workers, from the CEO all the way down to the guy who screws the plastic case together and puts it back on the conveyor belt. (Remember the cars on demand ad, with the robot painting the cars as people decide what color they want? .net made that possible!) There was going to be windows .net, office .net and so on, all of them designed to work with The Intarweb in new and wonderous ways that would blow the minds of every lesser being if so much as a hint of their power was whispered at them from across the room.

Now it's just a runtime for a bytecode interpreted language. Whoopity-doo.

Re:Does it matter?

[Ucklak]

Cross platform for Microsoft means it will work on Windows, Xbox, and mobile devices that run Windows.

It's just another word to ignore when Microsoft says it versus say Samsung when their printers are cross platform which means Linux/Mac/Windows.

Re:Does it matter?

[jedidiah]

...sounds suspicously like Unix actually, as Java did before.

Now unix has actually be successfully indpendently reimplemented in practice. Even java has.

It remains to be seen if .net will be in any meaningful fashion. It already has a sort of commercial Unix clannishness already built in.

Ultimately, any universal platform is "owned" suddenly becomes useless in terms of being "universal" simply because of that ownership. The legal definition of ownership is the ability to exclude.

Re:Does it matter?

[Rob Y.]

...was just a ploy to take some of the wind out of Java's sails.

Absolutely right. Microsoft was originally pushing .NET as a 'better Java', and in some ways, it actually was better. But in the way that really mattered to most Java developers, it was much worse. Its cross-platform nature was the main appeal of Java. Yes, the language may have been viewed as an improvement, and the 'managed code' approach to security is nice. But 'write once, run anywhere' was the main selling point of Java.

So how did Microsoft 'compete'? First, by deliberately sabotaging the cross-platform nature of Java, and Second by implying that their Java clone was cross-platform as well.

And the saddest part is that if Microsoft had been broken up by the Justice Dept when it should have been, .NET probably would have been made truly cross-platform. Then it could have competed honestly with Java.

Re:Does it matter?

[jesterzog]

So how did Microsoft 'compete'? First, by deliberately sabotaging the cross-platform nature of Java, and Second by implying that their Java clone was cross-platform as well.

It might appear that Microsoft competed by implying that DotNet was cross-platform, but I'm not so sure that it had much effect. From my own perspective, it seems that Microsoft's competed much more frequently by convincing people that they don't need to be cross-platform, because all their customers who matter either use Windows, or are on the other end of a web server. (No argument about the earlier sabotaging of the Java spec, though. That really was bad.)

Do you know of any Java shops that switched to DotNet because they honestly thought it would be cross-platform? I know of dev shops that have switched because DotNet was more suited to what they were doing, and also ones that switched because they had managers who just liked Microsoft, but I certainly don't know of anyone who switched with expectations of it being cross-platform. Anyone I've know who's used DotNet has quite consciously made a decision based on an assumption that they're unlikely to have a cross-platform product once they've done it.

Personally I think that Microsoft's main goal with DotNet has been to hold on to the Microsoft developers that they already had, as well as providing a decent managed platform for people who just want to develop Windows apps. Not everyone cares about cross-platform code, even if it's to their eventual peril.

Before DotNet came out, the only real options for coding in Windows were a mish-mash of ugly scripting languages such as VBScript, badly designed Microsoft languages (VBA), the unmanaged and less secure platforms such as C++, and platforms that weren't controlled by Microsoft -- such as Java.

If Microsoft hadn't introduced DotNet, all of those developers who were loyal to Microsoft would eventually have had to migrate to better platforms that were not only not controlled by Microsoft, but which were controlled by competitors such as Sun. This would have given companies like Sun a lot more control over Microsoft.

It's true that the marketroids at Microsoft skewed and mis-represented DotNet as they always do, but strategically I think DotNet was really a catch-up maneuver to make sure that Microsoft could keep what it already had.

Non Free is Predictable.

[twitter]

Is there anyone, anywhere who thinks Microsoft will ever do anything that's really free, and therefore portable, cross platform and all that other stuff they would like to say about .NET? The more they hype it, the more obvious the shortfall.

Re:Non Free is Predictable.

[Dionysus]

A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free. I don't know if Microsoft has ever claimed that .NET would be Free.

Re:Non Free is Predictable.

[jimstapleton]

agreed, and while Microsoft's implementation may not be free or portable, I've yet to see a good reason why Mono doesn't make .NET portable. Admittedly, Mono isn't completely finished, but any .NET applicatino that runs in Mono (and it's not unheard of) is an example of portable .NET

Re:Non Free is Predictable.

[Vellmont]

Is there anyone, anywhere who thinks Microsoft will ever do anything that's really free [gnu.org], and therefore portable, cross platform

Ever is a long time. Microsoft will do exactly what you describe shortly after they're losing badly to a competitor. Until then they'll continue to play the monopoly game.

Terrified, they aint.

[LibertineR]

Come on.

Why is Microsoft the only company constantly expected to make decisions anti to their business model? Where is the clamor for Apple to adopt VB for the sake of 'developers'? Ok, bad example.

But seriously; with 50Billion in the bank, I think throwing around words like 'terrified' serve no purpose but to feed the rabid-anti-Microsoft crowds.

Hard to have a serious discussion, when the article is premised on hype and flaming rhetoric to start with.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[LibertineR]

Just to follow up, how stupid is it for the same folks yelling "Microsoft sucks!" on a daily basis, to turn around and ask for access to some of that suckage for themselves?

Do they suck or not, people? If so, why ask for their shit?

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[Trailer Trash]

"Terrified" isn't really the word, but "paranoid" would probably do. Microsoft, as an organization, doesn't like to compete with other companies. So, their way of doing business is to rig the system so that they have such an overwhelming competitive advantage they don't have to compete. This is why they are paranoid about someone figuring out their file formats, certain network protocols. And they're paranoid about their army of developers being able to quickly and easily develop for other platforms. Look at their actions and you'll see that.

Frankly, that paranoia got them the $50B in the bank, so it's hard to argue against.

That said, they have as much interest in making cross-platform development tools as they have in supporting ODF, and basically for the same reason. The WWW is one of the only truly cross-platform development environments left; why do you think they want so badly to make a "flash-killer"? It's not about flash - it's about the web.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

Indeed. If Microsoft has a fault, it's the fact their marketing does claim they'll be just as cross-platform and open, as Adobe Flash is, as a web platform (talking about Silverlight and the open-sources CLR here).

Adobe open-sourced part of the platform as they feel the heat from Microsoft. Microsoft did the same as they feel the heat from Adobe (yes, having 50 billion in the bank doesn't mean they're immune to failure, so they DO react quickly to competition).

It's stupid to expect they should spend years developing .NET and then give it all away randomly to make MS-bashers happy (which they will never ever be, anyway).

Acknolwedge the amount of effort that went into .NET and accpet it as a great platform, that's more or less tied to Windows, and has limited deployment on other platforms. That's all you need to do: see through Microsoft marketing, and use technology where it's best fitted.

I'm a Flash developer and would still see lots of uses for .NET/Silverlight, that in some cases even mix Silverlight and Flash in the same experience - why not? Why should I be a nazi and not just give it to Microsoft for having a great runtime, when they do.

Screw bashers.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[dubl-u]

Why is Microsoft the only company constantly expected to make decisions anti to their business model?

I think Slashdot is pretty consistent in expecting companies to make decisions in favor of Slashdot readers. And when they don't, we expect them not to lie to us too much.

The problem with Microsoft is that their business model, which involves creating a fair bit of vendor lock-in and maintaining their monopoly by any means necessary, is one that doesn't fit well with either of those criteria.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

It sure seems like ANY company who makes software for Microsoft Windows is Microsoft's competition these days. Get it?

I wonder if you actually get it. Windows-only applications that are useful and popular make Windows stronger. Microsoft will lead the desktop OS market for a long time to come, because apps make it useful.

Adobe's a danger to Microsoft not because it's making software for Windows, it's making *cross-platform* suite that makes Windows less relevant, and now they're owning the cross-platform runtime (Flash) that replaces many uses for rich applications and WMP on Windows. This makes Windows, again, less relevant.

So Microsoft can stay idle and look how Windows is made less and less relevant by Adobe, or move in and claim that market with its own solution. Which is what they did.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[CmdrGravy]

No one is asking Microsoft to give .net away, we're just wondering why a supposedly platform independant, er, platform isn't available for much in the way of non Microsoft platforms.

The reason you can't use .net on Linux has got nothing to do with .net. If the only consideration was .net then Microsoft would make more money by making it available for as many platforms as they could rather than restricting it to Windows.

The problem with doing that, for Microsoft, is that if people can run their .net applications on other platforms then they have no reason to by Windows operating systems anymore and Windows lose money and this is the problem with Microsoft, all their products are forced to bow down before the overwhelming goal of maintaining a Windows monopoly rather than being allowed to fulfil their true potential.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

The reason you can't use .net on Linux has got nothing to do with .net.

If the only consideration was .net then Microsoft would make more money by making it available for as many platforms as they could rather than restricting it to Windows [...]

all their products are forced to bow down before the overwhelming goal of maintaining a Windows monopoly rather than being allowed to fulfil their true potential.

Why is any company expected to kill its most profitable product, so some other less profitable product can realize "its full potential"? No one can ask from Microsoft to take active steps in destroying its profits and going bankrupt.

Imagine you worked your ass off for long years to afford a good house and a shiny car, and some hippie asks you to move out and let homeless people live in your own place and drive your own car, since it's "realizing your asset potential" better. Do you do it, or tell the hippie to piss off.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

Find that Microsoft internal email where they say "cross platform will never work" and "lets steal Java" and then come back and tell us how much effort Microsoft put into .NET

I'd prefer to eat my own gonads than infect my system with a CLR, speaking of which haven't Sun just open sourced Java :P


I've read the memo, and I don't think it's so terrible. Microsoft has reasons to not have believed in crossplatform, because they've tried it before and it failed - the first version of MFC was cross platform (OS/2, Windows and more) and it was so slow and bloated they had to scrap it and redo it slim, just for Windows.

Even if a high level exec says "let's steal Java" it doesn't mean they downloaded the sources from Sun and did s/java/net. The fact they said that outlines their strategy, not the amount of effort it took to develop .NET.

If you *actually* worked a lot with Java and .NET you'll see how different they can be in some areas, the similarities are only in some of the basics (we got IL, we got runtime, we got Java/C++ like language syntax, called C#). .NET was developed highly modular, so today, it can be cross-platform. If Microsoft doesn't want it to be, it's their product, it's their call.

If they did announce "hey we're making it officially run on OSX and Linux", we'll have people like you come here to whine "omg it's a trojan hourse designed to kill Linux with patents and all that!".

If Linux companies were smart they'd actually stay away from .NET, as it could for very real make Linux dependent on Mictrosoft technology. Microsoft would love that.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[krelian]

If we wanted their shit, we would buy it. What we really want is for MS to stop being like the Borg. They should communicate with open languages and protocols and stop trying to assimilate the world. The reason they won't is that they would become irrelevant almost overnight.

So why do they suck? Microsoft is a business that exists to make money. The last thing you can say about them from a business point of view is that they suck. They are actually the absolute best at what they are doing - making money out of software.

.Net Framework Portability

[Wharper]

It does seem M$ is making some effort to take at least some portions of the .net framework to other systems:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/bb278106 .aspx

It even looks as if some companies are making dev boards with it:

http://www.embeddedfusion.com/default.aspx?id=76

In talking with them (M$) it seems that you pay to port this framework to whatever platform you would like to take the framework to. This is with or without an operating system.

Cheers,
    Bill

Portability

[Egonis]

It's pretty sad.

On the other hand, there is always the Mono Project (www.mono-project.org)
It even has a Visual Basic Compiler.

Yes, it's not ready for primetime yet (imo), but it looks very promising.

Microsoft's actions will just result in more 3rd party and OSS development.

Mono Anyone?

[N8F8]

Stop griping and expend your efforts bringing Mono up to .Net 2.0 compatability.

Java

[mwvdlee]

.NET is basically Java without the portability.
So why bother with .NET?

Re:Java

[poindextrose]

I develop in both the Java and .NET frameworks. I like the Java language a lot more than C#. Unfortunately, users like Windows.Forms a lot more than Swing.

Re:Java

[j00r0m4nc3r]

So why bother with .NET?

Simplicity. I hate MS to my very core, but I can whip up apps in C#.NET faster than I can in Java. 99% of the time I don't care about portability. I just care about getting things done on time. Of course, then there's the other times when I have to use MFC for various reasons, and that pretty much cancels out any gains I got from using C#.NET...

Re:Java

[aegisalpha]

Objects blah blah blah blah

They fear the power of C, obviously.

Re:Java

[Jarnis]

It may be preinstalled in Windows *Vista*, but it sure as hell is not preinstalled on XP.

Instructing end users to install this and that .NET framework is a common problem. As is explaining the fact 'WTF why do I have to install .NET 1.1, I already have 2.0!' - most users don't understand that the two can (and in some cases should) coexist.

MS has made .NET very end-user unfriendly in XP.

Re:Java

[oliverthered]

Here's a simple example.
When creating a virtual directory under IIS for apsx pages do you set the application up for Scripts or Scripts and Executables?

Answer.
You setup for scripts, well unless that fails in which case you have to setup for scripts + executables for no apparent reason leaving IIS vulnerable to a hacker dropping a cgi into the directory.

I've never had similar problems with Apache/Tomcat.

Re:Java

[CosmeticLobotamy]

As a .NET developer, I wish to God MS would just make the little error box that tells you the thing you're trying to run can't run without version X of the .NET framework have a button that says, "Click here to download and install it" instead of just failing. So every .NET program you make has to have its own bootstrapper in native code to make sure they have it or include a 22 meg installer for it in your own installer (assuming you're using an MSI [Which I'm not very good with, so maybe there's a way to download and run a second install from inside an MSI. If someone could tell me how to do that, if it's possible, I'd be grateful]).

Annoying.

.NET Is Only Really Useful on Windows Anyway

[repruhsent]

Other implementations of .NET are kind of stupid anyway, and, like it or not, Mono really isn't very useful. Anyone who does development on Linux/Mac/anything that isn't Windows will just use native code, or Java - probably because writing a native app isn't nearly as difficult on other platforms, and Java actually is write once, run anywhere (well, closer than .NET, anyway).

The only platform that benefits from .NET is Windows; have any of you written a native code Windows app (I'm sure many of you have)? The code is a nightmare and makes my eyes scream. With Windows, you really, truly need a system like .NET to make developing any non-trivial app even remotely possible, unless you want to spend 1,000 hours writing fucking COM shit (which I sure as fuck don't).

It's in their interest Not to...

[blueforce]

With the proliferation of Web Applications and SOA, and the diminishing relevance of desktop software, it's in Microsoft's best interest NOT to make it cross-platform.

Let's say that a full implementation of the .Net framework was available for *nix or OS X - all of the framework libs, ASP, WinForms, etc. What incentive would I have to fill a Web server farm full of thousands of dollars of Windows Server licenses when I could run my ASP.Net apps on Apache? The only real costs to add machines to the farm are hardware-related. .Net already has providers for Oracle and MySQL. Suddenly, Microsoft's Operating systems and platforms become irrelevant to developers who have years of experience and time invested in learning .Net.

Simple

[VincenzoRomano]

Because Microsoft never made a single portable product!
Where "portable" means "on other OSs than the Microsoft's ones".

its, it's, IT

[dailyrev]

Please forgive the grammar lesson, but this is the third time I've seen this error this week. And geeks should understand me more than anyone: you work with languages and grammar of your own. "abuse of it's developers" Here's your rule of thumb, author: 1. it's = it is (it's a beautiful day to bash MS) 2. its = belonging to it (its brain had been washed by Ballmer) 3. IT's = ah,now that could be either "belonging to the IT dept." or "I(nformation)T(ech) is..." So the correct spelling of the above would be "abuse of its developers..." --Brian Donohue, dailyrevolution.net

STOP whinging silverlight is coming to Linux!

[wwmedia]

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9714669-7.html?pa rt=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Blog post found to be incorrect, News at 11

[Michael Dorfman]

So, in other words, TFA chewed Microsoft out for not making .NET cross-platform, just days before Microsoft announces a cross-platform version of .NET. How exactly is this "stuff that matters"?

Re:So C# is .Net?

[revlayle]

.Net is a programming framework. C# is a Microsoft developed language, used pretty much exclusively in creating .Net applications (however there are other .net compatible languages, C# was just designed originally to use with .Net).

Duh!

[phillymjs]

Nobody with any sense is going to believe any cross-platform claims made by Microsoft anymore. The Windows platform is their lifeblood, and they'll do whatever they have to to artificially bind people to it. That's why they're fighting and delaying all attempts to truly open up their connection protocols and file formats. On a level playing field, people would desert Windows in droves, and Microsoft knows it.

Honestly, I don't see how this is even still open for debate in 2007-- Microsoft showed their true colors w/r/t portability after they added Windows-only extensions to Java. And that's if you ignore their prior attempt to balkanize the web and cause pain for anyone not running Windows IE.

Their "Flash-killer" and their "PDF-killer" and any other allegedly-open standards they try to foist off on us should be ignored and allowed to die. If we allow them to get a foothold, we deserve everything we get.

~Philly

Re:Snooze.

[Opportunist]

So what you're saying is that what they said some years ago shouldn't be taken serious anymore? Why should I take anything said by MS now serious? Why should I believe that what's being spun today holds any meaning in the future if I am not supposed to believe what I was told earlier?

Don't get me wrong, but when a company makes a statement or announcement, there are two ways to deal with it. Either believe it and expect it to happen or declare it bunk and handle it accordingly. And if the former is expected, the results should warrant it. Either MS follows its words with actions or it has to accept that people ignore their announcements, or, worse, read them for the same reason they read the Prawda: To know what will certainly NOT happen.

Re:So C# is .Net?

[digitig]

No. As I see it (and there's more than one way to see it) .NET is essentially an API and virtual machine offering that API. C# happens to be a high level language that maps very closely onto the virtual machine language, but in theory any language can compile to that machine language (and many do -- C++, Java, VB, Python, Ada, Eiffel, and so on). I like it as an API (at least at version 2.x), the VM makes multi-language programming a cinch, its memory manager really does seem to eliminate a lot of classic memory bugs, and its deployment model moves away from huge, centralised registries. But it comes at the expense of bloat and the speed penalty of an extra layer between the code and the metal. IMHO that's a reasonable design choice to have to make. If you're developing for MS Windows I reckon .NET is a decent design choice as long as you're not particularly size or speed constrained. If you're developing for anything else -- well, try starting here: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/133 6216&from=rss.

Re: Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Port

[nametaken]

I care. I maintain, and develop for, windows systems all day... then come home to all linux systems with the exception of an XP Pro VM I keep tucked away for emergencies. I'm not switching frameworks, and the business is not switching platforms. What's more, like most .net developers, I like the framework and the dev environment. They're the sort of things that MS actually got right.

It seems to me that the popularity of .Net should be obvious to those who frequent slashdot.

Whatever

[Concern]

Even if Java wasn't about to be GPLd, was it really worth all the effort, plus daring the world's most notorious IP barratrers' fairly obvious patent/IP trap, so you can get...

Operator overloading? Unsafe code in a VM? Not to say there aren't a few nice things. But too few. Mono is a dangerous waste of time.

That C#/.NET hype is so damn tired. It's a dead-end platform, unless MS opens it up, or chooses to add some truly novel features to it in the future.

Re:Hmmm...

[symbolset]

Why should they be afraid? Because given 30 years and more money than the GNP of Texas they can't come up with a better OS than a finnish nerd's geek vanity project, or a better language than c++. They should be afraid because the future is Open.

Re:So don't use Swing?

[AKAImBatman]

if you or your users don't like Swing there are numerous alternatives.

Indeed. Here's a few:

• SWT
  
• Qt/Jambi
  
• Java-GNOME
  
• wx4j (wxWidgets)
  

Those are the ones off the top of my head. There are quite a few more out there in the wild.

Re:Well in that case...

[alienmole]

.NET encompasses the API (actually a huge set of APIs), as well as a virtual machine (known as the Common Language Runtime, CLR), as well as a set of languages (like C# and VB.NET) and a whole lot of infrastructure designed to support those languages and the applications written in them. Such a system can certainly be made portable, and Java did that (but with a single official programming language) before .NET came along. But you're probably correct that the Windows-specificity of .NET means that making it truly portable is a dubious proposition, on many levels. In a sense, .NET is the new version of the Windows API.

BTW, any programmer worth his salt shouldn't have had a problem understanding what .NET is. However, Microsoft needed to market it beyond that group because .NET was so central to the future direction of Windows. The confusion you noticed was the result of that rather challenging marketing problem.

To use the ob. car analogy: it's as though a car company tried to sell a new range of vehicles by pointing out how they all use the same chassis, and promoting the wonderful characteristics of Chassis 2.0. No-one who's not a car manufacturer really cares. The additional problem with .NET is that not only didn't customers care, they didn't even understand what was being described. At least in the car case, most people have some idea what a chassis is.

Re:Well in that case...

[digitig]

It probably is an enormous amount of time and energy to port it -- ask the Mono folks. The benefit is code portability across platforms. That's why Tk/Tcl has been ported to multiple platforms, that's why wxWidgets has been ported to multiple platforms, heck, it's even why Java Swing has been ported to multiple platforms. And they're (mainly) just the GUI side of things; .NET offers a lot of other stuff too. Of course, it's the "lot of other stuff" that causes the bloat. Remember, it's not just an API, it's a virtual machine, which in theory looks the same on every platform. "In theory" because there's the little issue of what Microsoft will allow to be ported, and even MS have the sense to realise that complete platform transparency is pretty much impossible so there are some platform specific elements to the API.

Re:Snooze.

[CmdrGravy]

Why yes, of course because we all know that Microsofts strategy today was largely determined yesterday afternoon. A large multinational company like Microsoft with product lead times measured in years would never have discussed the actions they're taking today 5 or 6 years ago would they. You muppet.

Re:So C# is .Net?

[shutdown -p now]

I like it as an API (at least at version 2.x), the VM makes multi-language programming a cinch, its memory manager really does seem to eliminate a lot of classic memory bugs, and its deployment model moves away from huge, centralised registries. But it comes at the expense of bloat and the speed penalty of an extra layer between the code and the metal. IMHO that's a reasonable design choice to have to make.

Actually, it's faster than many think. Remember that the bytecode was optimized to be JITed rather than interpreted from the very beginning. The easiest way to check on it is to run your .NET program from within Visual Studio, set a breakpoint, and then go into "Disassembly" mode. You'll see what the JIT compiler made out of your code. I've found that for math, pointer operations, and method calls, it's pretty much the same as the output of a C++ compiler, except that you can't avoid checks for null reference on method calls (though it does not check for that repeatedly if one check is enough). Well, there's still the penalty from GC, and that one is harder to account for - but still, there really isn't much reason to pick C++ over C# for speed, unless you really really need that 3-5% extra.

Don't be stupid, it isn't meant to be portable.

[CFD339]

The whole point to the .NET framework is lock-in. It's the classic trade off Microsoft has always made. Back in the early 90's you could write Windows 3.x apps with standard C++ language tools, but if you used their framework you got to market 6 months quicker because you didn't have to create your own windowing code. So, you could hit 90% of the market six months faster and you did, but then you gave up cross platform C++ by relying on their windows only libraries, and thus your software didn't work on Mac. That was the play then, and it is the play now.

By developing for the .NET framework, you get a lot of things. You get easy install kits, a 'contemporary professional' look and feel, you get drag and drop design, and you get cross platform use from the standpoint of different windows desktop, server, and mobile platforms.

If you're willing to limit your app to Microsoft platforms, .NET saves you time and money on development. It really does. I prefer to write in Java, but when I'm doing something within the .NET scope, it makes sense to use it.

The whole point of this play is to tie users to Windows platforms. They're in business to make money, and this is one way to continue doing that.

Java was created specifically to provide an alternative to Microsoft based development as a way to thwart Microsoft. That was a (not the, but a) primary goal of its development and licensing structure from the world go. It wasn't created to make money and while its goals are laudable, they aren't always realistic. It has been an abject failure at the desktop and even as browser based applets. A huge amount of effort went into making it useful for web servers (j2ee) but even those are barely cross platform and are themselves rife with vendor lock in. It's not like you're ever going to host IBM's portal product on someone else's J2EE server instead of Websphere after all.

Of course not, what did you think

[guruevi]

Microsoft won't make .NET available to other platforms than their own, just because it's the only thing that keeps developers and architects from moving to a more stable Unix-like solution.

Another problem is that Windows is not POSIX compatible. Sure you can get the add-on that makes it a bit more POSIX-like but still .NET developers (unless they're knowledgeable on the subject) won't use the POSIX-compatible definitions in .NET/C# because they're fed/learned to use the 'simple' Windows way. Eg. defining a path. You could define a path as follows (yes, in .NET): (pseudocode): $userdrive + $platformseparator + dirname + $platformseparator + filename. Every developer though uses $DRIVENAME + \DIRNAME\FILENAME making it utterly inflexible to be used on another platform.

Multiple implementations is not portable.

[twitter]

A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free.

It's not portable if you can't move it to a platform of YOUR choice. Something that's not free may have SDKs for more than one platform, but that does not really make it portable. Being "open" does not help either. They could publish their entire source code but it would not be free if it was patent and copyright restrictions that keep you from doing what you want with it.

These days, that lack of freedom is a distinct disadvantage that will cost M$. It's always been a disadvantage to non free code, but the saving grace was a lack working alternative and someone might pay you for it. Because there are now entire free software systems, non free code has run out of saving graces. It won't even make money. Control is a loser.

Re: Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Port

[deathy_epl ccs]

When you say dev environment is better, do you mean VS.net is better than Eclipse? Eclipse has come to a point that it is way better than many development IDE.

I use both currently, and I can say that Eclipse may be way better than many IDEs, but Visual Studio.net isn't one of them.

Re:So C# is .Net?

[top_down]

If C++ is gonna be faster than C# there has to be a reason. If you are going the write the same program in C++ and C# there won't be much speed difference (3%-5%, 30%-50%, whatever). If you want C++ to be faster you have to write a different program using the features that sets C++ apart from languages like C# or Java. When you can avoid allocations on the heap and allocate on the stack instead, when you can give the compiler extra information by using the template system where C# generics can't or when you can get closer to the metal and avoid that extra copy, that's were you will see the real performance differences. Expect them to be massive.

Re:So C# is .Net?

[digitig]

Well, there's still the penalty from GC, and that one is harder to account for - but still, there really isn't much reason to pick C++ over C# for speed, unless you really really need that 3-5% extra. If you're choosing between C++ and C# runnung under .NET then C# may have the edge, being closer to the VM language, but it's a tough call because of the GC issue (and because C++ optimisation is pretty mature).