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Microsoft May Back Off of .NET Languages
An anonymous reader writes "Though Microsoft had initially made a commitment to create versions of dynamic languages that are customized for .NET, recent reports make it clear that the company may be stepping back from this plan. Much early speculation on this change in focus comes from Jim Schementi, previously the program manager in charge of Microsoft's implementation of the Ruby software known as IronRuby. Schementi reports on his blog that the team dedicated to working on IronRuby has decreased to one employee. According to Schementi, his departure from the company came as Microsoft began to display a 'serious lack of commitment' to any .NETized dynamic languages, including IronRuby."
So, Oracle are suing Google and making the JVM a less viable platform.
And Microsoft are pulling back on resources for IronRuby.
Looks like it may finally be time for the LLVM to step up to the plate and provide an open source alternative. Here's hoping...
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Was anyone actually using them? We have Python and Perl scripts running on windows and always preferred ActivePython and ActivePerl.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
The truth of the matter is that it is very hard to support random other languages on VMs written for certain languages.
All these dynamic languages do one thing or another that puts a hole in your plan. Ruby with it's continuations is right up there but Python with "modify anything fundamental anytime" isn't much better. The native environment has a huge headstart.
We should all move to LLVM.
While this is slightly different, creating dynamic language environments on top of .Net, language neutrality in .Net has always been a myth. It's why there is only one language for .Net in C# and how VB.Net has become totally pointless because it's merely a syntactically different but identical .Net language. After attempts at those languages failed, such as those by ActiveState, we then got reasonably API compatible Ruby and Python environments being developed on top of .Net. Unfortunately, people already had API compatible versions of Ruby and Python - the official ones - and as a result no one has seen fit to run anything under a .Net Ruby or Python environment en masse. Environments like JRuby just clouded the landscape still further. All Microsoft really wants to do is try and get a critical mass of developers deploying to their versions of Ruby and Python probably for embrace and extend, and there is no sign that this is happening. They're trying to keep on with PHP because it's still the dominant web scripting language that they need for Azure to look semi-credible, but this is likely to meet a similar fate for the same reasons.
.Net they simply didn't do. They should have created a rapid application development environment on top of .Net, free of the strict confines of C# and object oriented development, that aimed to be at least API compatible with classical VB so people merely had to recompile - as they had always been able to do. Alas, all that Microsoft did was force developers to throw lots of lines of existing code down the drain if they wanted to upgrade or either stay on the platforms they were on permanently or convert their applications to web based ones, which many did.
.Net.
The one environment that Microsoft should have created on top of
Microsoft don't appear to have learned a thing after ten years of
Microsoft management knows full well that the only way to stay on top of their huge bloated codebase and architecture is to continue along the path of managed code. The only thing they're not fond of are dynamic languages, pure and simple. Support for dynamic languages was added to the .NET runtime very late in the game, and begrudgingly at that. Their current development and runtime environments rely on huge amounts of auto-generated boilerplate glue without which the simplest tasks wouldn't be possible.
The reasons for this are probably largely historical, because there are still a lot of people from the old COM days working at MS. There are fact-based arguments as well: Dynamic languages tend to be more concise but are more difficult to automatically evaluate and optimize, especially considering the way Microsoft is relying on interface contracts and access policies (all of which are either generated by static language code or in turn serve to generate such code). Besides, none of the teams working on those much-needed tools and design-helpers wants to be put out of a job, so of course they have to stay firmly committed to their huge heap of statically generated code.
A few years ago some Microsoftie told me about a new research OS they were working on, it was completely .NET-based and probably still reflects how MS would like Windows to be if they could start over from scratch today. I believe the project's name was Singularity, I don't know if it still exists. Anyway, the whole point of the OS was its completely static architecture. There was no support for dynamic languages, all executables were statically linked and completely rigid. There was no self-modification allowed for any application and as far as I remember applications couldn't even dynamically load libraries at runtime. So, in a way, they already made clear which road they are going to go down. Dynamic languages aren't in the mix anymore, but managed code will stay around for a long time at Microsoft.