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C# In-Depth
Bergkamp10 from ComputerWorld writes "Microsoft's leader of C# development, writer of the Turbo Pascal system, and lead architect on the Delphi language, Anders Hejlsberg, reveals all there is to know on the history, inspiration, uses and future direction of one of computer programming's most widely used languages — C#. Hejlsberg also offers some insight into the upcoming version of C# (C#4) and the new language F#, as well as what lies ahead in the world of functional programming."
Why must they make me trawl through 8 pages of ads?
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett
I beg you to use this link instead of flipping thru all 8 pages
I am a sad case and find much amusement in the fact that the "correct" name for the # symbol is octothorpe, which means "C#" should not be pronounced "C-sharp" but Coctothorpe.
Imagine my joy on discovering that they've scoured the alphabet and have managed to find a new initial letter that makes an even funnier name.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome the new language, F# or Foctothorpe.
Could it be that C# is one of the most widely used simply because of the installed base of windoze machines all over the world and not because of any technical merit? Most current languages have compilers and interpreters that run on windoze; what makes people choose C# over the others? Just how much impact has C# had on computing sciences as a whole, anyway?
>>one of computer programming's most widely used languages.
I highly doubt that a language that has only been around for a few years is the most "widely" used computer language. Cobol, fortran, or standard C , maybe.
Really? Is that actually true? I thought it was still relatively obscure. I'm not sure I've ever even met more then a handful of people who have done any real work with it. Am I just totally out of the loop? Has C# truly surpassed C, C++ and Java?
It's closer to Java than C++. Much closer. Would you call Java a 'slightly altered and nonstandard and proprietary' version of C++?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I'm curious, what gives you the idea that C# fragmented "the whole programming scene"? As far as I can tell, C# has really just replaced C++ on the Windows client side, where Java never had a foothold to begin with.
So, where is this fragmentation you speak of?
I think C# is one of the better languages I have used. I think M$ has done a good job (as they usually do) of stealing the concept and making it easier for the user (in this case, developer). I do understand that as far as M$ is concerned, it is only meant for Windows. However, that does not diminish the fact that it is a good language. I have friend who work solely on Java. Their target deployment servers are linux. But they do all their development on Windows.
The Roctothorpe!
*insert headbanging graphic here*
Either a troll, flamebait, or spoken in ignorance.
Languages evolve, and anyone that knows c++ and c# knows that what you have stated is patently untrue. Not interested? Then don't bother, but until you do your research, please refrain from throwing in your apparent 2 cents worth...it's not really worth that much.
As has been stated already, the CLR is in fact a standard, and c# has more in common with Java than with c++. It's an evolutionary language, and it is very popular for a lot of very good reasons. But you'd know that if you cared to bother looking into it.
No Comment.
Well, F# is a perfect fourth up from C#, which offers better resolution than moving to E#, a major third up. At least they didn't go for G, at which point they'd have you begging for G#.
Well there is fragmentation produces as they introduce YET another language.
You currently cannot say C# replaces C++ on Windows platform as using any DirectX components for example is nightmare through C#. Which I think is a rather major obstacle if you have an application that would like to use something other than simple sound output facilities. (Reasons for this might be as simple as choosing a sound output device, on at least .NET 2.0.)
More on the major downside of writing .NET applications is that you cannot guarantee that the stuff I work on my Vista workstation works on my co-workers XP workstation. This is a very sad "feature" that has been bugging as even with very simple applications. (Side note: We have tried to code using all the best practices you can find from MSDN.)
Also, GP's point 3 sounds very interesting. Can it be a success when it cannot be used to produce major parts of their own operating system. (No, I'm not talking about writing their kernel with C#).
Though, the GP doesn't list any sources for point 3, which at least I would be very interested to read as I seem to have missed those articles.
According to this: http://www.langpop.com/ , C# is only the 9th most popular language, only competing with scripting languages.
It comes nowhere close to the more popular programming languages in terms of usage.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Well there is fragmentation produces as they introduce YET another language.
So? That's a problem for Windows developers. Why should a Java programmer care? In the realms where Java is popular, C# has had basically no influence. So MS has, at worst, fragmented the Windows development ecosystem... big deal. :)
You currently cannot say C# replaces C++ on Windows platform as using any DirectX components for example is nightmare through C#.
...
More on the major downside of writing .NET applications is that you cannot guarantee that the stuff I work on my Vista workstation works on my co-workers XP workstation.
But none of this has anything to do with fragmentation to begin with. You're getting off-point. And that's ignoring the fact that, once again, this is a problem for MS... the rest of the programming world doesn't care one whit how hard DirectX is to integrate with C#.
Can it be a success when it cannot be used to produce major parts of their own operating system.
Last I checked Java wasn't being used to write operating system components, yet no one claims it's a failure. Now, that's not to say C# and .NET are unbridled successes, but that's a pretty crappy metric for making the call.
I'm a little surprised at the ease to attack C# but not much. It actually does a few of the things that C++ folk would like over Java, but I can understand the comparisons with Java.
Anyways, I've been fooling around with it for a while via an O'Reilly book and so far it's not too bad. That said, I don't see it much use beyond the Windows .Net Framework. Then again, that's all employers seem to want to see on the resume nowadays when it comes to development. And who can blame them?
I do have a cause for concern though....
The fact it feels like he's faking the enthusiasm, as he did for most of this dumb interview, is slightly scary. The followup question confirms that
Lastly...
It is possible to build alternate implementations. We are not building .NET for Linux, because the value proposition that we can deliver to our customers is a complete unified and thoroughly tested package, from the OS framework to databases to Web servers etc.
Ummm....just because it's possible to build an alternate implementation doesn't mean it will work the same way. It would absolutely kill me to use a language that implements two things differently because MS wants to hold back special class $VERY_IMPORTANT_FUNCTION that is the paramount to the language, such as database or socket connectivity.
I seriously hope that Java being opened helps chop block this. With open code, my hope is more places will buy into the language, showing MS that a "industrial-strength" language can be free.
import system.cool.Sig;
i think you mean "standard encumbered with patents, and not covering the whole libary" and while it is true that it is a interpreted language like java, its syntax is a lot like c++. Although, your probably right. I really shouldn't compare it to c++. thats a insult to c++. Its more like visual basic.
Your reply indicates you have new clue what C# is. C# is not a direct descendant in design from c++. C# is a child language of Java more than anything. You could probably convert 90% of C# code directly to java with a simple find/replace regex for keywords.
C# is also not non-standard. The C# language has a published standard, which, while not open source, is not the same as non-standard. A number of other implementations exist for both the virtual machine level(e.g. mono, boo) and the compiler/ide level(e.g. sharpdevelop)
C# more tolerable than java in terms of ease of design and naturalness of the language, and good for a similar scope of projects.
I like the ability to release windows binaries without having a headache about version compatibility, the irrationality of the underlying windows API, or memory leaks in trivial portions of code.
C# is not the best language for all sorts of problems, but when it comes to banging out a GUI .exe for windows users to use quickly, I don't think there are better choices.
Not only that, but the "standard" is of the type anyone with cash can buy.
The .NET "standards" weren't submitted to peer review, in a fashipn like IEEE. Instead, they were handed in a manilla folder to a cashier with a whole lot of money.
Voila, parts of .NET become a "standard".
Basically getting .NET "standardized" was fancy marketing campaign.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
How exactly is C# not open sourced?
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Dude, you seriously need to stop sipping the red bull or whatever your drinking...
Turbo-Pascal was a god send to the programming world. It was an entry point for 10's of thousands of programmers and I am one of them. It was the 1st IDE, write your code then compile and run in one key press! No one had that, not a single company. Yes it was limited to 64K of code and data and only made an image ( com file ), but what you could do in that 64K was beyond anything else at the time.
Say what you will about Anders going over to the dark side, I mean until then he was my personal hero, but there is no denying the mans brilliance. Turbo Pascal for Windows? Again, no company had anything remotely close to that and he was the architect. Delphi... Again, no one had anything close to that, and he was the architect.
The OOP model that came out of Borland made C++ look exactly like the joke it was and is today. Their model was infinitely superior, and again, he was the architect.
The demise of Borland was mostly about Microsoft's malevolence and monopolistic ways. If MS had wanted actual competition, more then likely we would would all be programming in Borland languages to this day, instead of the shit that comes from MS which most of Anders has a hand in, but is corrupted by the MS Marketing machine making technology decisions.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
"C# is not the best language for all sorts of problems, but when it comes to banging out a GUI .exe for windows users to use quickly, I don't think there are better choices."
Delphi - Simpler, Faster, less overhead, By the same author!
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Yeah, it only took twelve years for that to happen. I guess C# just won't get around to it for another five years.
It seemed like 90% of the time when I came across a badly behaved application that ignored command line redirects because it went straight to the BIOS just to write its copyright banner, and wouldn't run on anything but a perfect clone, or wouldn't run under DoubleDOS, or (later) required the most stringent DOS emulation under Windows, it was in Turbo Pascal.
Hey! I wrote some of those applications, you insensitive clod!
(Whaddya want? I was a 15-year old kid with a copy of Turbo Pascal. A very dangerous thing back then. ;)
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I'm sorry, gotta disagree right here. I absolutely hate Delphi, it feels like retarded VB compared to my work with C#. Granted this is opinion, but I know I'm not alone in this train of thought.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Simple, encapsulation of private variable. Java:
C#:
The implementation is about the same in both languages, but using it is much nicer and cleaner in C# than in Java.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I think that one of the most interesting developments of C# and most mainstream programming languages is that they keep borrowing long-established elements of functional programming.
All and all this is a positive development. The only irritating aspect about it is the number of Microsofties who think M$ is inventing new stuff and being "innovative(TM)". A good example of this is F#: while the language is basically an adaptation of Ocaml to the .NET environment (to the point that simple programs are indistinguishable), I've seen plenty of people touting F# as the best thing since sliced bread, but completely failing to mention its roots, or the fact that Ocaml is a well-established language with a long history, and perhaps the most successfull (in terms of actual usage in the industry) of functional programming languages.
(Though I give credit to the interviewee in this particular article for being an exception to this rule, and for acknowledging F#'s pedigree).
Incidentally, this has long been a burning question for me: why is a language like Ocaml ignored to such an extent within the mainstream open-source community? It already has a small but vibrant community, excellent coverage in terms of libraries, performance comparable to C++, and the safety and cleanness that comes with functional programming. I even see Linux people excited with F#, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we *already* have a language better than F# that runs natively under Linux!
(Note: I consider Ocaml to be superior to F# because in the process of transforming Ocaml into F#, Microsoft removed two of the most interesting and powerful features of Ocaml: functors and polymorphic variants)
when it comes to banging out a GUI .exe for windows users to use quickly, I don't think there are better choices.
I've got a Q and a t who think otherwise. Product page: http://trolltech.com/products/qt/ Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)
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Having spent the last seven years using Qt and C++, and the last two comparing that with C#, I'd agree with the original poster: C# is a better choice for fast productivity to a GUI .exe for Windows.
Throw other platforms into the mix and my decision changes, but that's not what he stated, is it?
Qt lost a lot of points in my book for just how much time was destroyed in porting our code to Qt4. Two years later, and we're still asking for bugfixes.
(First off, Java was ALWAYS open source, just not OSI-compliant)
But the difference is that Microsoft has committed developer resources to work with the Mono team at Novell. Sun never committed any resources to work on GCJ.
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A quick search yielded this site:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
The implementation is about the same in both languages, but using it is much nicer and cleaner in C# than in Java.
That really is a matter of opinion. In Java, it's pretty clear that you are requesting or modifying a property of the object. In C#, you are using assignment to represent that mechanism so you might be accessing a public member variable directly or calling a method to achieve that end. To me, the Java method is more explicit and therefore less prone to error.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
After a month or so of line by line code inspection the team discovered that the C# code they used had inherent memory leaks and the problem was not repairable
Actually, they did fix the problem... since it was an issue with their code and not C#. C# was doing what it was supposed to.
In Java, it's pretty clear that you are requesting or modifying a property of the object.
Really? The paranthesis after the method name inclines me to think of it as a function, and I prefer using assignments vs a function call; it's easier to read and debug.
eg. blah.Prop = someFunct(); is easier to read than blah.setProp(someFunct());
In C#, you are using assignment to represent that mechanism so you might be accessing a public member variable directly or calling a method to achieve that end.
Which is kind of the point... a property is exposed as if it were a public member. I don't /care/ if I'm assigning to a property or a public member.
To me, the Java method is more explicit and therefore less prone to error.
What? Can you give me an example of how it is less prone to error?
I program in Java too, but I prefer c#. I see c# as an improved version of java. The designers of c# learned from their mistakes.
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Hogwash. Anyone who has spent any time whatsoever with C# in Visual Studio knows the difference between a property and a public variable when they try to assign it. And if you have intellisense off, then the only people who will get confused are those who don't follow any sort of naming conventions. And in that case, they are likely to get confused no matter what language they are in.
> Turbo Pascal and Delphi were popular because 20 or so years
> ago universities taught Pascal to their computer science students.
False, or else MS-Pascal would have become equally popular. Turbo Pascal was popular because it only cost $44.95, thus falling into the "buy it for a lark, try it, and toss it if it isn't good" buying space. Turbo C and Delphi, in their first versions, were equally under-priced, compared with $250 or so for MS compilers, and over $500 for some of the really good C compilers.
The really good, independently produced, compilers died away as Borland's cheapness and MS's standardness (not real standards, THEIR standards, but they wrote the OS, so *surely* they had the best tools? NOT) gradually undercut their niches. The first Turbo versions were crippled from the POV of professional programmers, but were good enough for students, amateurs, etc., and Borland then introduced better compilers for higher prices, until the best version was about as expensive as MS C, but slightly better (following the old GM strategy of cannibalizing yourself, rather than letting competitors do it, by covering all the price points). GNU C also helped kill them, as it was also good enough to make the other compiler companies' offerings redundant.
> About the time Delphi came out, things moved on
> and they began teaching C++ which pretty much
> killed Delphi off.
Actually, the programming market had only moved from Pascal to C, but Delphi was very wed to Pascal and its idioms. It also ran into the wall, in that the REALLY complicated stuff that professionals did was beyond it, and Borland didn't have a follow-on product.
We still don't have a good replacement for C or C++. The big problems with C are 1) the language doesn't know how big arrays are (the cause of most of the buffer overflows in the world), 2) the language has no clue about concurrency or locking (the cause of most of the race conditions in the world).
Objectve-C fits both criteria. You use the found class NSArray for pretty much everything so you don't get buffer overflows, and you have a decent threading model with runloops and Java style @syncronized statements for threading, along with a lot of useful functionality to do common things with threads (like detaching a thread, having a thread run a method after a short delay, etc.). Further helping desktop aps at least is garbage collection, but even when you can't use that the memory model of release/retain is still more easy to use and less prone to having issues.
And, you can always fall back to C or C++ as needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pretty sure that music precedes unicode, dude, and they write the sharp sign using anything that looks like a tiny smooshed tick-tack-toe board.
At any case, you're both wrong. "E#" is pronounced "eff" - there is a half step between E and F, and the "#" sign denotes "do this note, except take it up half a step."
E#==F.
That's actually not entirely true.
It is true that going a half-step up from E gives you F. However, in certain keys you'd still refer to the note as E#.
Bow-ties are cool.
Incidentally, this has long been a burning question for me: why is a language like Ocaml ignored to such an extent within the mainstream open-source community? It already has a small but vibrant community, excellent coverage in terms of libraries, performance comparable to C++, and the safety and cleanness that comes with functional programming. I even see Linux people excited with F#, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we *already* have a language better than F# that runs natively under Linux!
(Note: I consider Ocaml to be superior to F# because in the process of transforming Ocaml into F#, Microsoft removed two of the most interesting and powerful features of Ocaml: functors and polymorphic variants)
I can't exactly answer why other languages don't get more play - but I can lament that the .Net platform has been responsible for draining some of the life out of every language they touch. I still remember a very excited Eiffel proponent being very excited about Eiffel# when it first came out - not realizing it was a gateway for Eiffel users to flow to pure C# programming.
Perhaps F# is a true move by Microsoft to switch everyone to functional programming, but it could just as easily be a trick to get people using the .Net platform and then through convenience get them to move naturally to C# from there...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Better than C#? Well, how many platforms can you name that C++ is not available for? If you're willing to go back to an early version of C++ it compiled via C (may be possible even for current versions, I've never bothered looking into it), so at least some version of C++ would run on anything that runs C (and had enough resources).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"C# ... is very popular ..."
By "very popular" I take it you mean less popular than Perl or Python, but more popular than Delphi.
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I was a 15-year old kid with a copy of Turbo Pascal. A very dangerous thing back then.
Aha! "Turbo Pascal, the PHP of the '80s."
Yeah, that was what I thought before I started using C#. I am a 10+ year veteran of the Java world, and have spent the last year or so on a large C# project. C# has much better syntax in every way that it deviates from Java. Properties are quite clear, since VS does a nice job. Under the covers, there is *no* difference between a property with an implicit getter/setter (i.e. you didn't provide one, so you access the variable directly)--the bytecode creates a synthetic get_ and set_ method, allowing things like AOP to work even if no explicit getter/setter is provided.
The Java method results in much more verbose boilerplate code. This also causes many developers to do more cut-and-paste, another source of potential error. The Java method makes tech like AOP much harder, as there is no synthetic method call surrounding access to public member variables. The Java method is, in short, not object oriented, as it does not properly abstract away property access, so Java tacked on this stupid getXXX/setXXX naming convention in the JavaBean standard.
There are many reasons why Java is a superior platform than .Net/C# (maturity of 3rd party libraries, the open source community, the quality of design in the provided libraries). But the language itself is not one of them. I cannot think of a single area where Java bests C# in terms of the language itself. C# really is the next generation of Java, and has learned from Java's mistakes.
--Be human.
If you have to use legacy libraries (dll/so), then you will definitely like .Net over Java. That's my single biggest gripe with Java, is the pain that is JNI. I also find that development in VS is far easier than using any of the Java IDEs I've tried. Not to mention that ASP.Net, Dynamic Data, and MVC frameworks are easier than anything in the Java side of things to get up, running, and debugging at runtime. Java is more portable, that is a given. But I still prefer C#/.Net.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
It hides from the developer that you are actually doing something that could be costly.
For example, that innocent "item.price" could actually be calling an stored procedure that makes all kind of querys to get the right price for the current session customer.
In Java, item.getPrice() would be a hint to this fact. In C#, someone could abuse the property, in different instances of the same item, unaware that he should cache the value to avoid performance hit.
Of course, there are ways to prevent this, but are mostly related to procedures the developers must follow.
Actually, while I really like C#, LINQ, and Visual Studio on the whole (I'm quite happy developing with it), I'm starting to understand why Java had some things that forced the programmer to be explicit about what his/her code did. Not forcing you to catch or throw exceptions means, for example, that methods that couldn't throw an exception (according to it's definition) actually throw them. And you didn't put a try catch because it was a simple call and there were no methods that could throw...
If your goal is ugly code, then Java is the clear winner.
I should really use monstrously long words and about 38 more lines to explain this, but Java is not my preferred writing style.
t
Java: Properties are private variables/methods exposed through a public method. Seems unnatural and tedious when accessing a guarded variable, e.g.
Line.GetWidth(); Line.SetWidth(10);
Two different calls for accessing a single property.
C#: Properties are private variables/methods exposed through a public variable. May be cause for surprise e.g. when
Line.Width++
increases width and executes statements outside the scope of width increase.
For exposing a (guarded) private variable I prefer the C# way, but it's too easy to mix data with flow.
I don't feel a property can be accessed as either a variable or a method, because it isn't and adds to confusion.
I had a bad experience with .NET 2, where in order to open an old project in Visual Studio it insisted on converting to .NET compatibility apis. The rather simple program then ran insanely slow, so slow that the interface was sluggish and it was useless for its purpose (automation).
It hides from the developer that you are actually doing something that could be costly.... there are ways to prevent this, but are mostly related to procedures the developers must follow.
You mean like reading the documentation and/or the source code of the class you're using? If you don't know how or where the object is getting its data, then you're just as in the dark whether it's data passed via a C# get/set or a Java method. Granted the Java method approach is a "clue" that it's not just a member int being set, but I'm not sure that's the ideal way to "get a clue"...
I understand what you're getting at with all this, but at some point familiarity with the road is going to serve you better than guardrails all over the place.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Here are some problems with Python:
* significant whitespace does not play well with common development practices (merging, diff'ing, copying, pasting code, esp. on web pages)
* GIL makes it very hard to scale or completely unscalable in some situations
* no support for static typing makes large projects harder to manage
* not truly cross platform - a lot of common libraries are implemented in C and thus you have to install native code for them to work - bad luck if there isn't a binary for your platform.
* no common standardized GUI toolkit
* poor commitment to backwards compatibility - Python 3k is going to break compatibility in major ways as did releases before it
* awkward and ugly object oriented semantics (declaring "self" in class methods, ugh)
* poor IDE support
* poor adoption - not sure what makes you think the labor pool for Python is better than other languages
I'm sure a dozen python supporters will jump up and object to all these - there is hardly anything revolutionary about these criticisms and most of them have been fought to death in enormous flame wars in the past. But the end result is, Python is not great for a lot of "enterprise" type situations due to these things (and you will quickly see how sensitive pythonistas are to this snub since they constantly mock the word "enterprise" on mailing lists etc.). In other situations it can be brilliant.