Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

C# In-Depth

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the does-he-mention-that-it's-evil dept.

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."

10 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. The Printer Friendly version ... by neonprimetime · · Score: 5, Informative

    I beg you to use this link instead of flipping thru all 8 pages

  2. Foctothorpe FTW by netpixie · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Foctothorpe FTW by netpixie · · Score: 5, Informative

      That'll be because music uses sharps (i.e. unicode symbol 266F) rather than octothorpes (unicode 0023)

      E followed by unicode 266F is indeed E sharp
      E followed by unicode 0023 is E-octothorpe.

  3. a bunch of questions by yanyan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:a bunch of questions by nschubach · · Score: 5, Informative

      Looks like it's down to #8 actually:

      http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    2. Re:a bunch of questions by Nursie · · Score: 5, Informative

      8th most widely used.

      After Java, C, C++, Visual Basic, Python, Perl and PHP. It just beats out javascript, below that you get into the obscure languages.

    3. Re:a bunch of questions by ByOhTek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've tried a number of apps in mono under frebsd (you need lang/mono and x11-toolkits/libgdiplus). Threads, UI, Sockets, SSL sockets, etc. all seem to work fine. Compiled in Visual Studios 2003. It's not even bad as a cross-platform application.

      Conversely, in Suns own Java implementation, going between Windows and HPUX, I've run into issues simply with the regular expression parser of the /find/ function of the String library.

      I'm not saying .NET is perfect by any means, but it's certainly not bad framework either. It's decent for cross-platform apps. Everything has it's flaws, nothing is perfect, etc.

      Yes, I know, there is always a chance MS will say "No more!" to the mono project. As I said, nothing's perfect.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  4. C# Usage by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 5, Informative

    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);
  5. Re:Oh, well, that explains everything... by FlyingGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  6. Re:oh goody. by Tiger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.