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Is Microsoft 'Reaping the Rewards' From Open-Sourcing Its .NET Core? (infoworld.com)
An anonymous reader quote InfoWorld:
Two years ago Microsoft did the unthinkable: It declared it would open-source its .NET server-side cloud stack with the introduction of .NET Core... Thus far, the move has paid off. Microsoft has positioned .NET Core as a means for taking .NET beyond Windows. The cross-platform version extends .NET's reach to MacOS and Linux...
Developers are buying in, says Scott Hunter, Microsoft partner director program manager for .NET. "Forty percent of our .NET Core customers are brand-new developers to the platform, which is what we want with .NET Core," Hunter says. "We want to bring new people in." Thanks in considerable part to .NET Core, .NET has seen a 61% uptick in the number of developers engaged with the platform in the past year.
The article includes an interesting quote from Microsoft-watching analyst Rob Sanfilippo. "It could be argued that the technology generates indirect revenue by incenting the use of Azure services or Microsoft developer tools."
Developers are buying in, says Scott Hunter, Microsoft partner director program manager for .NET. "Forty percent of our .NET Core customers are brand-new developers to the platform, which is what we want with .NET Core," Hunter says. "We want to bring new people in." Thanks in considerable part to .NET Core, .NET has seen a 61% uptick in the number of developers engaged with the platform in the past year.
The article includes an interesting quote from Microsoft-watching analyst Rob Sanfilippo. "It could be argued that the technology generates indirect revenue by incenting the use of Azure services or Microsoft developer tools."
The reality is that javascript is the universal language at the moment of 'get stuff done'
It is, but javascript is a gigantic mess, and therefore shouldn't be used for teaching, just like C++ (which is a mess too, but a smaller one).
This move allowed us to deploy C# code to all kinds of platforms, not just Windows machines, which is becoming much more important in enterprise and research fields. Our developers enjoy working in C#, and we can make good use of it across our enterprise-sanctioned systems, so advanced tools like Visual Studio (which is still a very nice IDE), become higher-value investments.
I don't see what's so "unthinkable" about it; Microsoft has been pretty honest and well-behaved when it comes to .NET since the start: they created open standards, made legal commitments not to assert any patents, and have supported Mono. That is... unlike that other company and its platform.
The first thing I thought about the "Oracle is going to start shaking down developers" article from yesterday was that it was a boon to C#.
-scott
If you flee from Oracle into the warm embrace of Microsoft, expecting everything will be fine, you deserve everything you are going to get. We'll read about it on slashdot in a few years: "Microsoft demands licensing fees from .NET developers", and some of us will be thinking "phew, I dodged another bullet there".
But hey, if decades of experience with a company means nothing to you, by all means lock yourself into Microsoft's walled garden.
I sure hope so. They're a corporate, profit-making entity, a fact which they've never attempted to hide or disavow. If there is a benefit to be had from open source, they'll take full advantage of that benefit - hopefully to the mutual benefit of their bottom line and the open source community.
look, if you use javascript for teaching then you will get pupils graduating without knowing the difference between basic data types - or really anything. even basic would be better, really, for teaching basics.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
No. Hell no. Higher education is about teaching concepts and proper practices. A gutted mess of a language simply isn't appropriate for good education. Python is an equally 'easy' language but has far superior constructs for abstraction, sensible error handling , structured and OO design, and so forth. Its duck typing goes easy on new students, but doesn't fall into the traps offered by languages like Javascript or PHP's weak typing.
Beyond that Java (or C#, the two are almost interchangeable here, and with Java rapidly becoming radioactive thanks to oracle, it might be the better choice) , C/C++, Clojure and Haskell all provide proper computer science training whilst still remaining job market viable.
And if someone is unlucky enough to end up in a javascript shop, well theres always whisky and the blues.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
C# on Unity works across all relevant game platforms - PC, console, mobile, VR. I'm not sure how much .NET is in there, though.
Xamarin gives you C# and .NET on mobile platforms, which may be where his gaming company sells.
There is nothing you can do with it today you can't do faster with native code
So, if you're writing a game engine, yeah, not C#. But for most of the actual work of game development, C# is worlds better than LUA, which is the default choice today.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In the videogame industry at least, C# is extremely popular for tool development and scripting, while C++ is largely used for engine and game code. It's a clean, well constructed language, is similar enough to C++ to train up programmers easily, and integrates well with native C++ code. JavaScript is occasionally used as a scripting solution and for web integration (or web games, of course), but it's not quite as popular for general purpose use, from what I've seen. Lua is still used for runtime scripting as well, while various other languages like Python or Java contribute in minor ways with tools and automation.
So, once again, a language pissing match is completely pointless unless you specify what you're actually developing, and how it will be used and deployed. How often do I have to say this? Different languages, different strengths.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
We're 16 years into C# and 14 years into .NET, and they've gone from "will not sue" licensing to full blown opensource and multiplatform, with alternate GPL'd implementations if you don't like Microsoft's. How long do we need to wait before you'll move beyond blind religious zeal?
Javascripts ability to handle objects/functions and array dynamic push/pop...
I see you set the bar extremely high! Wow, a push AND pop.
Functions as well? That does it. I officially declare javascript as language of the century!
If it only had objects... Ow, it does? oooh aaah.
At the very least it would be better to teach in Typescript that addresses some of the shortcomings in JS, but then someone would moan that it's Microsoft again. But better yet, programming would be taught on a structured, forgiving, well designed standalone language. There are plenty to choose from. Scripting and other concepts would be introduced once the basics were learned.
Mono is still a patent trap
Have you been saying that for over 12 years? That's a long time to keep calling that the sky is falling. In that time, Microsoft have made good on their promise not to sue regarding patents and Mono. They have also acquired Xamarin and then contributed the Mono Project to the .NET Foundation (the independent organisation incorporated by Microsoft to foster OSS development with .NET).
What more can they do to shut up the nay-sayers who keep crying that the big bad wolf is going to sue us if we use Mono?
The reality is that javascript is the universal language at the moment of 'get stuff done'.
Only if your platform is a browser. These are the things i lately worked on, and Javascript would be of no use in any of them:
- Embedded board doing hard realtime IO signals (100us response time) and Ethernet/IP communication on a 8bit CPU with 4KB RAM
- Windows device driver for a special PCIe card receiving continuous 80MB/s data from an image sensor into system RAM.
- soft real-time image sensor processing the stream data with latency below 3ms: interpolate dead pixels, normalize gain, apply 2d band stop filter
- soft real-time image post-processing on 60MB/s stream, with latency below 20ms: illuminated area & motion detection, spatial and temporal noise reduction, multi-resolution non-linear detail enhancement processing, adjust contrast & brightness
Above processing must run on a desktop quad-core with max 40% CPU load.
It required manual threading and hand-written vector code (SSE intrinsics) to reach the performance.
It has been supported for a while now. The most recent version of F# tooling for VS also supports Core projects.
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/9675/is-unity-engine-written-in-monoc-or-c.html
"The Unity runtime is written in C/C++. [...] The editor is built on the Unity runtime and additionally includes editor-specific C/C++ binaries."
--AngryAnt (Emil Johansen), Ex Unity Technologies
"Unity is written in C++, with the following exceptions: [...] There is hardly any functionality in UnityEngine.dll, the only thing it does is relay your c#/javascript calls into the C++ part of Unity. Without the C++ part there is nothing."
--Lucas Meijer, Unity
The current team of the .net is good and smart, but if some higher up decides that "they should focus more on getting direct profits", they might get forced to revert all this and go full oracle.
Just look at the damage they did to Windows.
It's a trap!
JavaScript not only has objects, it has the best buzzwords for its objects. They are duck typed with prototypes!
Which mostly means that you can never be sure that the duck you put in your garage won't act like a bulldozer when you take it out.
Did I miss something when I installed node.js on my OS? I was under the impression that javascript code I ran with that is browser-agnostic (though built on Chrome's V8 tech)
We're 16 years into C# and 14 years into .NET, and they've gone from "will not sue" licensing to full blown opensource and multiplatform, with alternate GPL'd implementations if you don't like Microsoft's. How long do we need to wait before you'll move beyond blind religious zeal?
You are actually ready to trust the company that gave us Windows 10, then? And that might next year very well decide that _all_ Windows applications need to go through the Windows Store?
Windows 10 has shown us there is no limit to the level of idiocy they are willing to commit to. And if you believe your future is in good hands with them, I can only wish you good luck.
I'd be willing to bet that a large part of the popularity doesn't have anything to do with .Net per se, but rather because Microsoft has positioned .Net as a competitor to Java, while at the same time Oracle is hell bent on making Java as distasteful to use as possible.
Java is second only to C/C++ in terms of platform stability. Java is, quite simply, what you use when you need to write an enterprise-level app and you don't want to be forced into the Windows ecosystem.
But Oracle happily poisons everything they touch. They destroyed OpenOffice. They destroyed MySQL. They have ruined pretty much everything that they got from Sun, and while Java has still been able to hang on, it has been despite their best efforts. Every bit of news that has Oracle and Java in it, is almost exclusively negative, where Oracle is trying to screw someone out of money. Hell, they're even squeezing Java developers, who are the primary reason the platform is even viable.
When .Net was open sourced, people (including me) were shouting "It's a trap!", because Microsoft doesn't seem to do anything without an ulterior motive. Sometimes it's transparent, sometimes they do the long play, but at no point is "Microsoft" and "trust" used in the same sentence. But now we're at the point where you have two options. A possible "It's a trap" scenario with Microsoft, and Oracle's "We're gonna fuck you till you're dead, and then we'll fuck the corpse."
So yeah, when those are your options, .Net definitely becomes a whole lot more attractive.