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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.
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?
Yes, it must be one of the most widely used, because it seems that every day I hear of .NET failing to scale somewhere.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
The Roctothorpe!
*insert headbanging graphic here*
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);
I can feel my Karma burning here but in my office we run into this issue with a lot of MS products. SQL Server 2000 ........ Upgrading is not an option since the DoD just approved SQL Server 2005 for classified use. Apparently 2008 is the bees knees but come on 8 years to get your shit straight? And we've also run into massive problems getting asp.net applications to scale. We've found MS best practices while certainly easy are not very efficient behind the scenes and cause massive slowdown when used on a large scale. And after using their ajax toolkit I wouldn't touch that thing with a ten foot pole.
Now I might sounds like I'm bashing .net a bit. But .net products do have their time and place. I code in C# almost everyday. But for anything Enterprise I would think twice about it.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.