Actually, I have to disagree with that, too -- but the benefit to Microsoft isn't where anyone is looking, it's internal. Microsoft has been very busily rewriting everything (literally) to run on top of.NET in-house.
Years ago when.NET was first announced, I started saying that I think Microsoft plans to use.NET as a way to jump Windows on to other hardware platforms, and I still think that. It's funny to see people finally picking up on that same concept.
The marketing may fade away, but the platform will still be there, and I'm betting you'll be surprised where you find it cropping up during the next few years...
The end result should be a computing experience that is fairly smooth to the end user and provides a lot of what's already out there but with different names and faces.
That statement is exactly why I spend so much time explaining that Microsoft marketing is.NET's own worst enemy. That is how Microsoft marketing has explained.NET. Unfortunately, it is thoroughly unrelated to 95% of what.NET really is all about.
As for the rest of your post, well, there is nothing new under the sun. When I first learned about OOP, I was pissed. They weren't "methods", they were "functions". Or "procedures". Same argument.
Let's review. Sun's claims for Java -- and this is all about CLAIMS -- were that we'd have feature-rich client applications that we wrote once and they magically ran everywhere.
This has failed to happen.
Why? Two reasons. Java applets were HUGE when users predomaninantly had 28.8K connections and 56K was still considered fast. Write-once/Run-anywhere was a lie -- deploying a Java applet that worked reliably across multiple platforms was an expensive and time-consuming task. Consequently, it didn't get the consideration it probably deserved.
MS had the absolute flat-out best performing JVM and JIT in the industry for a LONG time, and even Sun did not dispute this fact. The controversial Java extensions that landed MS in court did not affect a Java program which didn't use them. MS did not ship a JVM compliant with later releases because they were NOT ALLOWED due to Sun's own legal action.
Finally, if you had real-world Java experience in the early days, you'd know it was the Mac JVMs that were the worst and most buggy (well, and some UNIX versions, ironically the Solaris JVM was awful). I had a room full of machines for applet testing, and it was extremely rare that we had to code work-arounds for the Windows JVMs...
So, in conclusion, according to the standards being questioned here -- whether it delivered on it's initial promises -- Java fails miserably.
Clearly Java has excelled elsewhere, but the earlier poster has made a good point.
Re:It can do most of what they say...
on
.Net:... 3 Years Later
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm not sure how many times I've seen this single point refutued, but your not tied to a single language to use the the JVM. Want proof, here you go [tu-berlin.de]. That's COBOL to Eifel with all the good bits in the middle.
JVM language "flexibility" was added after the fact, and it often introduces some fairly ugly things to existing languages (not that.NET compliance won't).
Most people don't understand that the.NET intermediate langage (IL, which is what.NET programs compile into unless you use the native-compile switches) was intentionally designed to be language-neutral (it can do a few things that C# can't), and whereas the JVM bytecode was designed to be executed (e.g. it is structured so that it is easy to interpret), IL was designed to be compiled (e.g. it is structured so that it is easily JIT-consumable).
Bzzt, wrong. It was in development for a LONG time before anyone heard of.NET. It was originally called Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS).
However, I will agree that the.NET name and the awful, vague marketing campaign that followed was a more or less direct response to the rising popularity of Java-based solutions.
That doesn't make the underlying pieces vaporware.
And while I hate the marketing campaign they've cobbled together, it's not TOO damned surprising that they would oppose... well, their opposition. It IS what businesses do, you know. McNealy does it, too.
And again, the part everyone fails to understand about.NET (mostly due to Microsoft's crappy marketing) is that remoting in.NET is a fully pluggable artchitecture. So whatever standard emerges, you can still use.NET. Just handle your remoting in a reasonably abstract way, then switch the damned thing on the fly.
Hell, some of the basic tutorials that came with the.NET beta (and probably with the release version, I never got around to looking at them again) showed you how to do this. A local binary component communications channel was transparently switchable to an HTTP-based protocol using policies which were controllable by an administrator... re-programming and re-compiling not required.
Fight all the standards wars you want, then just plug in the winner and get back to work.
To a degree I think you're probably right. But the other reason is probably that they've gotten the term out among the people who should care, which is the developer community. There is still a lot of.NET advertising going on targeted at developers (even here on OSDN), but as the Parent posts observe, they're no longer attaching the name to everything that moves.
It's worse than that. Microsoft marketing is largely to blame for the confusion and misinformation surrounding.NET. They pitched it as web services when in reality web services is just a small (lame) part of a relatively big thing.
The problem is that the marketing strategy succeeded too well, but their strategy failed to deliver a message that anyone but die-hard Microsoft developers could clearly understand.
.NET itself hasn't failed except on the stupid wild claims made by the starched-shirt sales & marketing drones in the ad department.
You are exactly correct in that most people don't know what.NET really is, and that includes people using it, and Microsoft itself. Once again, Microsoft marketing has screwed the pooch. They were so hot and bothered to tie.NET to the buzzword of the day (Web Services) that they overlooked a great deal of important features and capabilities.
If you ignore the marketing noise, though, it is itself a cohesive strategy, but it's quite a wide-ranging thing and it's hard to get the right perspective on it. The problem is that you probably started looking too early. The first round of books were all written based on the betas (I reviewed many of them for various publishers), and they were all targeted at teaching the world the basics of.NET.
There are now many books that explain the guts in great detail.
To continue with your specific example, there are MANY projects which support or are working to implement CORBA remoting for.NET. A simple Google search for ".NET CORBA remoting" yielded tons of results.
Microsoft marketing is Microsoft's own worst enemy...
.NET was in development for several years before it was announced (three years, as I recall). This is common knowledge. Try again. (Here's a tip: it was originally named Next Generation Windows Services, or NGWS. Go look it up.)
C# is too inspired by Java? Java syntax was inspired by C. Big deal. C# is still a better language. The devil is in the details. Show me boxing in Java.
.COM is not "included in" with the CLR in any way. The CLR supports something called COM-interop, but that's just backwards compatability. You can make a fully compliant CLR on another platform which never goes near COM but still runs full.NET applications.
And finally... "ASP.NET is lauging out loud"? What the hell does that even mean? I personally don't like ASP.NET, but at least it's far more consistent than PHP is or probably will ever be.
Return to class, you obviously have some catching-up to do.
I guess they should start setting speed limits a bit slower than the real safe speed.
They already do. The speed limit is normally 85% of the speed considered safe according to engineering surveys of the roadway in question using some relatively generic model of a car & driver.
I've heard that explanation before, too. Not that anyone believes he actually meant it when he wrote it. Regardless, it just seemed appropriate given the light-years-as-time comment.
Not everyone agrees about (1) what should be done, (2) how it should be done, (3) who should do it, (4) who should pay for it, (5) or who should be in charge, and whole slew of other things.
Pretty simple. Basic human nature, life in the real world, etc etc etc.
I started on an Apple II but so what? You can't get any real useful work done on one now and yes, even the 400mhz and 733mhz CPU's people are talking about in here are getting pretty long in the tooth for business use.
Until very recently, a guy I know ran a $3M/yr business on a Z80 based Northstar computer which dates from the late 70's or thereabouts. It was slow, and the printer clacked out information on 132-column greenbar fanfold, but it did everything he needed. He only upgraded to a PC when he couldn't find replacement printer ribbon any more and the ribbon in the re-inked cartridges started falling apart.
(Yes, he's a cheapskate, but like many cheapskates, he's mind bendingly wealthy.)
The original article said it is cheaper to build a PC comparable to the XBox specs?
Things like Dolby 5.1 surround-sound are part of the spec, and a big part of what the device can do, so I have to disagree strongly. Also kindly note that the wicked-cheap XBox now sells for only $170, so your target just moved farther away.:)
As somebody else mentioned, it actually has Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio, but you're also missing a controller, the OS (sure you could get Linux for free, but then you'd have the problem of only having three decent games to play on it), as well as a GeForce that does HDTV, not to mention the capability of making your DVD player remotely controllable for only $25 (I suppose this last might be doable on a PC these days, I've seen it mentioned, I just don't know what it costs or what the remotes come with).
Let's see a show of hands for everyone who thought Nemesis was the best Star Trek yet?
[crowd remains motionless]
Funny, everybody I know *loved* Nemesis. It was truer to the original Star Trek, which was a simple fly-around-and-blow-things-up type of show. The newer Star Treks have turned into namby-pamby self-important soap operas. If the special effects hadn't gotten so amazing in recent years, the god-awful scripts would have killed the show a long time ago.
Here's a clue: shows like Star Trek are supposed to be escapist. If you believe otherwise, you're probably one of those pasty-skinned, overweight freaks whose sole claim to fame will be a shot of you reciting 10 seconds of mangled Klingon gibberish in the "Trekkies II: Hot Kirk-on-Spock Action" DVD.
Nemesis brought it back to basics -- fire up the latest bad-assed ship and go kill some aliens.
Most of my friends' issues aren't from the major vendors like Dell but rather self-built PC's that utilize a mishmash of buggy motherboards and the like.
Funny, I was just about to post the exact opposite...
Slashdot Mirror
Years ago when .NET was first announced, I started saying that I think Microsoft plans to use .NET as a way to jump Windows on to other hardware platforms, and I still think that. It's funny to see people finally picking up on that same concept.
The marketing may fade away, but the platform will still be there, and I'm betting you'll be surprised where you find it cropping up during the next few years...
It was more funny when Homer said it about beer.
And having it crammed down my throat was more palatable, too.
That statement is exactly why I spend so much time explaining that Microsoft marketing is .NET's own worst enemy. That is how Microsoft marketing has explained .NET. Unfortunately, it is thoroughly unrelated to 95% of what .NET really is all about.
As for the rest of your post, well, there is nothing new under the sun. When I first learned about OOP, I was pissed. They weren't "methods", they were "functions". Or "procedures". Same argument.
Let's review. Sun's claims for Java -- and this is all about CLAIMS -- were that we'd have feature-rich client applications that we wrote once and they magically ran everywhere.
This has failed to happen.
Why? Two reasons. Java applets were HUGE when users predomaninantly had 28.8K connections and 56K was still considered fast. Write-once/Run-anywhere was a lie -- deploying a Java applet that worked reliably across multiple platforms was an expensive and time-consuming task. Consequently, it didn't get the consideration it probably deserved.
MS had the absolute flat-out best performing JVM and JIT in the industry for a LONG time, and even Sun did not dispute this fact. The controversial Java extensions that landed MS in court did not affect a Java program which didn't use them. MS did not ship a JVM compliant with later releases because they were NOT ALLOWED due to Sun's own legal action.
Finally, if you had real-world Java experience in the early days, you'd know it was the Mac JVMs that were the worst and most buggy (well, and some UNIX versions, ironically the Solaris JVM was awful). I had a room full of machines for applet testing, and it was extremely rare that we had to code work-arounds for the Windows JVMs...
So, in conclusion, according to the standards being questioned here -- whether it delivered on it's initial promises -- Java fails miserably.
Clearly Java has excelled elsewhere, but the earlier poster has made a good point.
JVM language "flexibility" was added after the fact, and it often introduces some fairly ugly things to existing languages (not that .NET compliance won't).
Most people don't understand that the .NET intermediate langage (IL, which is what .NET programs compile into unless you use the native-compile switches) was intentionally designed to be language-neutral (it can do a few things that C# can't), and whereas the JVM bytecode was designed to be executed (e.g. it is structured so that it is easy to interpret), IL was designed to be compiled (e.g. it is structured so that it is easily JIT-consumable).
However, I will agree that the .NET name and the awful, vague marketing campaign that followed was a more or less direct response to the rising popularity of Java-based solutions.
That doesn't make the underlying pieces vaporware.
And while I hate the marketing campaign they've cobbled together, it's not TOO damned surprising that they would oppose... well, their opposition. It IS what businesses do, you know. McNealy does it, too.
Hell, some of the basic tutorials that came with the .NET beta (and probably with the release version, I never got around to looking at them again) showed you how to do this. A local binary component communications channel was transparently switchable to an HTTP-based protocol using policies which were controllable by an administrator... re-programming and re-compiling not required.
Fight all the standards wars you want, then just plug in the winner and get back to work.
To a degree I think you're probably right. But the other reason is probably that they've gotten the term out among the people who should care, which is the developer community. There is still a lot of .NET advertising going on targeted at developers (even here on OSDN), but as the Parent posts observe, they're no longer attaching the name to everything that moves.
The problem is that the marketing strategy succeeded too well, but their strategy failed to deliver a message that anyone but die-hard Microsoft developers could clearly understand.
If you ignore the marketing noise, though, it is itself a cohesive strategy, but it's quite a wide-ranging thing and it's hard to get the right perspective on it. The problem is that you probably started looking too early. The first round of books were all written based on the betas (I reviewed many of them for various publishers), and they were all targeted at teaching the world the basics of .NET.
There are now many books that explain the guts in great detail.
To continue with your specific example, there are MANY projects which support or are working to implement CORBA remoting for .NET. A simple Google search for ".NET CORBA remoting" yielded tons of results.
Microsoft marketing is Microsoft's own worst enemy...
And finally... "ASP.NET is lauging out loud"? What the hell does that even mean? I personally don't like ASP.NET, but at least it's far more consistent than PHP is or probably will ever be.
Return to class, you obviously have some catching-up to do.
They already do. The speed limit is normally 85% of the speed considered safe according to engineering surveys of the roadway in question using some relatively generic model of a car & driver.
Of course, that doesn't make it any more pleasant to the ear... :)
I've heard that explanation before, too. Not that anyone believes he actually meant it when he wrote it. Regardless, it just seemed appropriate given the light-years-as-time comment.
But I bet the ship they develop will be able to do the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs!
Pretty simple. Basic human nature, life in the real world, etc etc etc.
Academician is valid English.
Until very recently, a guy I know ran a $3M/yr business on a Z80 based Northstar computer which dates from the late 70's or thereabouts. It was slow, and the printer clacked out information on 132-column greenbar fanfold, but it did everything he needed. He only upgraded to a PC when he couldn't find replacement printer ribbon any more and the ribbon in the re-inked cartridges started falling apart.
(Yes, he's a cheapskate, but like many cheapskates, he's mind bendingly wealthy.)
Things like Dolby 5.1 surround-sound are part of the spec, and a big part of what the device can do, so I have to disagree strongly. Also kindly note that the wicked-cheap XBox now sells for only $170, so your target just moved farther away. :)
The xbox runs a modified version of Windows 2000.
As somebody else mentioned, it actually has Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio, but you're also missing a controller, the OS (sure you could get Linux for free, but then you'd have the problem of only having three decent games to play on it), as well as a GeForce that does HDTV, not to mention the capability of making your DVD player remotely controllable for only $25 (I suppose this last might be doable on a PC these days, I've seen it mentioned, I just don't know what it costs or what the remotes come with).
[crowd remains motionless]
Funny, everybody I know *loved* Nemesis. It was truer to the original Star Trek, which was a simple fly-around-and-blow-things-up type of show. The newer Star Treks have turned into namby-pamby self-important soap operas. If the special effects hadn't gotten so amazing in recent years, the god-awful scripts would have killed the show a long time ago.
Here's a clue: shows like Star Trek are supposed to be escapist. If you believe otherwise, you're probably one of those pasty-skinned, overweight freaks whose sole claim to fame will be a shot of you reciting 10 seconds of mangled Klingon gibberish in the "Trekkies II: Hot Kirk-on-Spock Action" DVD.
Nemesis brought it back to basics -- fire up the latest bad-assed ship and go kill some aliens.
Funny, I was just about to post the exact opposite...
I appreciate the input, but I really think C# is a better language, and as long as I control the server, using .NET really isn't a problem.