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.NET Native Compilation Preview Released
atrader42 (687933) writes "Microsoft announced a new .NET compiler that compiles .NET code to native code using the C++ compiler backend. It produces performance like C++ while still enabling .NET features like garbage collection, generics, and reflection. Popular apps have been measured to start up to 60% faster and use 15% less memory. The preview currently only supports Windows Store applications, but is expected to apply to more .NET applications in the long term. A preview of the compiler is available for download now. (Caveat: I both work for MS and read Slashdot.)"
Popular apps have been measured to start up to 60% and use 15% less memory.
So they no longer fully start up? Why is that a benefit?
They also open-sourced their new C# compiler:
http://roslyn.codeplex.com/
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
apps will get deployed on end-user devices as fully self-contained natively compiled code (when .NET Native enters production), and will not have a dependency on the .NET Framework on the target device/machine.
Yeah, I can't wait for a half-gigabyte executables.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"After all, the chief advantages of C# isn't really C#, but the .NET libraries."
You can't be serious! C is *substantially* lower-level than C#; you should only use C as a portable assembly language. I've spent decades writing assembly, C, and higher level languages and I'd pick C# over C in an eyeblink for anything that doesn't require access to the bare metal (well, personally I'd pick a functional language, but these days I work in industry...)
In tests I had done some time ago with the early compilers, .Net code was actually faster than C implementing the same algorithm. The reason is that it can perform global optimizations, in-lining aggressively. Sure that can be done with C (and you do not even need macros), but it takes extra work, slows down the compiler if too much is put into header files, and programmers usually miss some of the routines that need in-lining.
Modern generational garbage collectors are also faster than malloc/free, and do not suffer fragmentation.
Delaying compilation makes it architecture neutral, same distro for 32, 64bit, ARM etc. What is needed is to cache the results of previous compiles which causes a slight but usually negligible start up penalty.
Compiling all the way to machine code at build time is an archaic C-grade idea that became obsolete thirty years ago for most common applications.
No. You can't do that unless the platform is locked down hardware wise, and that's not been the case with the major OS's for quite some time now. The best tool -- to date -- for anything serious aimed at a major OS is c. By far. Not C++. not objective c, not C#, not asm ... just c.
No. That's not it at all. I don't care where it was invented; that's a symptom, not the actual problem. The problem is bringing in other people's code results in a loss of maintainability, quite often a loss of focus on the precise problem one is attempting to address, a loss of understanding of exactly what is going on, which in turn leads to other bugs and performance shortcomings. OPC comes into play at multiple levels: attempts to manage memory for you; libraries; canned packages of every type and "handy" language features that hide the details from you. NIH because it wasn't you just *looks* like the problem, but the problem is what NIH code actually does to the end result, and that's a real thing, not a matter of I don't like your style, or some personality syndrome. If the goal is the highest possible quality, then the job has to be fully understood and carefully crafted from components you can service from start to finish, the only exceptions being where it *must* interface with the host OS. Even then you're likely to get screwed. Need UDP ports to work right? Stay away from OSX. Need file dialogs to handle complex selections? MS's were broken for at least a decade straight. Need font routines that rotate consistently? Windows would give it to you various ways depending on the platform. And so on. Better off to write your own code if you can possibly manage it. You know, so it'll work, and if your customer finds an error, so you can fix it instead of punting it into Apple or MS's lap.
I use "bloated" when my version of something is 1 mb, and a friend's, with fewer lines of code, is 50 mb and runs the target functionality at a fraction of the speed, not to mention loading differences and startup differences. It's not just about a library routine that isn't called (well, until there are a lot of them, or if they're very large... linkers really ought to toss those out anyway), it's primarily about waste in every function call, clumsy memory management that tries to be everything to everybody and ends up causing hiccups and brain farts at random times, libraries that bring in other libraries that bring in other libraries until you've got a house of a thousand bricks, where you only actually laid a few of them, and you have *no idea* of the integrity of the remaining structure. Code like that is largely out of your control. Bloated. Unmaintainable. Opaque. Unfriendly to concurrently running tasks.
Look at your average iOS application. 20 megs. 50 megs. Or more. For the most simpleminded shite you ever saw; could have been implemented in 32k of good code and (maybe) a couple megs of image objects. That's what I'm talking about, right there. Bloat. It's that zone where a craft is swamped by clumsy apprentices who think they understand a lot more than they do. Where one fellow creates beautiful, strong, custom furniture, and the other guy buys a 59.95 box from IKEA and turns a few cams. The good news is that there will always be a place for those who can really craft, because there's a never-ending source of challenges where crap just won't do. And despite rumors to the contrary, end users do know the difference -- especially once they've been exposed to both sides of the coin.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.