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Visualizing the .NET Framework
eldavojohn writes "If you're a Web developer, you should check out a quick post about the number of types, methods, & fields in the .NET framework. This was done using NDepend. The numbers are quite large — e.g. 39,509 types. The blogger went on to generate tree maps and a dependency matrix."
The comparison to the human genome is interesting. The genome contains about 3 billion base pairs and 30,000 coding genes. As best I can see, .NET is quite a bit bigger: The closest thing to a gene is a method (an object that can be used, or not used, and which does something). The genome has 30,000 and .NET has 384,000. So even if it takes 10 methods to do what one gene does, they are equivalent.
.NET has 8,000,000 instructions. Given the roughness of the comparison, this is pretty close.
.NET :))
It takes 3 base pairs to code for a single protein, perhaps the closest we can come to an instruction. Each gene has an average of 3,000 base pairs, equivalent to 1,000 instructions. So we are looking at 30,000 genes x 1,000 instructions/gene or about 30,000,000 instructions in the genome.
The point here is that we are creating programs that are roughly equal in complexity to the human genome. If we were better programers, then perhaps we'd have come up with intelligent design.
Finally, it's worth noting that the functions are unknown for over 50% of discovered genes. It may be about the same for
Monorails are efficient and sparkly shiny but are almost universally inappropriate except for certain very limited transportation scenarios (airport people-movers, theme parks, etc). They require alot of service and very expensive infrastructure. The old honda just needs a road, works on your schedule and is comparatively inexpensive to maintain on a per capita basis.
Just sayin.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
FWIW, he does have something of a point. Microsoft cycles its platforms at an incredible rate that just is not natural for the industry. As soon as one gets used to the existing API, Microsoft deprecates it and creates a new one. What's the advantage of the new one over the old one? In many cases, no one knows.
.NET 1.x incompatible with 2.0? No idea. All I know is that Microsoft does these things. Evidence suggests that Microsoft does it intentionally to lock out competitors. (source: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates) If that's true, then it certainly doesn't cast Microsoft in a good light.
.NET is NOT their primary goal.)
Why did Microsoft rearrange the VBA API from Access 97 to Access 2000? Heck if I know. Why did Microsoft make IIS extensions written in
That being said, you are also correct in saying that C# is a superior desktop development platform. If you're developing for Windows, I don't see any real reason not to use it. It's a fairly decent platform with tons of modern features. The only time it's really inappropriate is when your program needs to be cross platform. In which case Java might be the best choice despite the inherent difficulty in developing a good GUI in Swing. (Or SWT if you prefer. Don't even think about using Mono. Trust me, it's bad juju. Even the Mono devs will tell you that compatibility with
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The most common .Net developer mistake now is that people don't bother finding the function they need -- instead they just reinvent it and waste everyone's time when maintaining that code later. The problem with 30,000+ items is that there's no good way to teach people where to look for something that's already in there. If it were organized in such a way that one could easily not reinvent the wheel, then it would be an awesome language. Without that, though, it becomes yet another way for people to create crappy date parsers.
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