India and US have a lot in common, outside trade and commerce. Like Free Press. Unrestricted Internet. Real courts. Democracy. I could go on. Similarly, we have a lot of respect for other democratic countries. It is not always about money.
2011 will have some of AMDs most anticipated releases ever, Bulldozer and Bobcat. Also decent graphics are no longer a luxury, it is a necessity even in phones and tablets. Intel makes terrible graphics cards, while AMD makes the best performing ones available today. 2011 will see more widespread adoption of integrated CPU+GPU solutions (from both Intel and AMD), and guess who will hold the advantage there.
a nation state with polytheistic Hindu as it's official religion
I don't know where you pulled that out from. India has no official religion.
Our Prime Minister is Sikh (about 2% of the population). The most powerful person in the country is an Italian-born christian woman. Our President (mostly a ceremonial post, with few powers) is Hindu, and vice-president (another ceremonial) is Muslim.
I don't know where AC is from, but we are pretty proud of the fact that we are "genuinely" multi-cultural. To the point that we are willing to elect someone to the most important office in the country, irrespective of religion.
To our left is Pakistan and Afganisthan (two of the most dangerous countries in the world). And another on the north, which has a firewall on their entire population and doesn't even have a free press.
These guys are right next door, not a couple of oceans and a continent away.
Also, freedom of speech, dissent and media is reasonably well protected here. It is difficult for the government to come up with any Orwellian scheme.
I just hate this line of argument, which is unfortunately too common.
Article on how HIV/Aids is a big problem in Africa. HIV is a big problem in the US too.
1. -- Insert significantly affected country here. -- 2. Insert _relatively_ marginally affected country here. 3. Claim the situation is very similar, and hence the article to be moot. 4. Profit!!
In China, every day broadcasters are summoned by a Govt. agency to tell them what can be published, or should be taken off. This includes even cultural news, entertainment and other seemingly innocuous news - because they prefer such control being absolute.
While the three points you raised are relevant, they are not important enough to justify your conclusion about "language polish".
* Adding extension methods without also adding extension properties The objective of extension methods was to support LINQ, with the capability to extend a class being just a bonus. It was not the primary motive.
* Refusing to implementing covariant return types Covariance and contra-variance are addressed (somewhat) in the upcoming version 4.0 (out March 22nd, 2010)
* Adding type inference, but disallowing it for class method return types Important, but considering that type inference works in the vast majority of cases - this is not such a big pain.
Scala is not without its problems 1) Performance (Though not an issue in most projects, but perhaps more important than the arguments above) 2) C# Expression trees are insanely powerful; eg: Type Safe SQL. another possibility: Code that gets automatically distributed across machines if the dataset is more than 1GB.
If you know LISP, you know that Code-as-Data is magic. And C# brings that to a mainstream programming language.
If linux is a third of netbook volume, overall linux market share (through netbook sales alone) is about 6%. Add 2% for Linux on regular desktops and notebooks.
Linux share @ 8% of all new PCs shipped calls for celebration. But I doubt it.
In our current project, we optimize C# code at runtime to run database queries faster. This is possibly only because the C# compiler turns that code an expression tree that can be analyzed at runtime (and then compiled, converted to sql etc).
Some parts of it: Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is complian.... To clarify, "Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.
Is this Community Promise legally binding on Microsoft and will it be available in the future to me and to others?
A: Yes, the CP is legally binding upon Microsoft. The CP is a unilateral promise from Microsoft and in these circumstances unilateral promises may be enforced against the party making such a promise. Because the CP states that the promise is irrevocable, it may not be withdrawn by Microsoft. The CP is, and will be, available to everyone now and in the future for the specifications to which it applies.
Having the Linux version of Microsoft's standard be clearly inferior will just make Linux seem clearly inferior (and justifiably so).
Mono isn't chasing compatibility with proprietary Windows Libraries. Instead, the focus is on the language/compiler implementation, runtime and important parts of the Base Class Libraries. You should read this post, which was quite popular recently.
Actually the bigger Mono projects don't even work on Windows. So, doesn't that suggest that developers who write code on Mono don't really care about proprietary Windows mechanisms?
Microsoft needs to make the first move. Why? There are doing well considering there was a recession, and Windows 7 looks like a winner.
Note that Windows is more proprietary, more shackled than ever before. Err. How? Hasn't it always been closed source? Or is there an "Extremely Closed Source" classification?
I love open source, and use linux on my primary desktop. But I am not going to whine about Microsoft not doing enough for open source.
Stallman is a functional programming stalwart. Unix in general has had functional programming for a very very long time.
Not disputing either, but Stallman's statements had nothing to do with how useful Mono is. I was just pointing out what Mono brings to the table.
The reason C# is remarkable is that there are millions who are familiar with it (perhaps not the functional parts, which is somewhat new). There is no purely functional language (on any platform) with enough mind share to qualify as "popular". Popular sometimes has its advantages when working in a team; documentation, resources, tooling, availability of developers... etc.
We have Java, as well as Python and various other languages on Linux for the niche Mono wants to fill
Actually Mono fills a niche not satisfied by any other language on Linux. 1. Python - too slow for any processor intensive tasks (I do a lot of python myself.) -- not strongly typed, if the project decides to go that route. 2. Java, the language - No closures, lambdas, generators. Impossible to do any declarative programming. Many, many people hate it.
C# brings functional programming to the masses, and Mono brings C# to Linux.
I have great respect for America's determination to protect freedom and free speech. That word means a lot to you, as it does to me.
But wait, before you call it a Tiananmen square "massacre" - do you consider that ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND people are now dead in Iraq. Last week, a drone killed 140 people in Afganistan, mostly innocents.
So, as opposed to thousands of their own people killed by the Chinese, you went to another country and killed much much more.
I am not saying it is worse; just saying that taking a stance on moral issues is difficult. And often becomes very subjective.
Moonlight 1.9 is available as a preview, and is compatible with SilverLight 2. Not that there are any SilverLight websites I visit, but it is available if you badly need it.
SilverLight 2 is a massive departure from version 1 (for instance, it now includes the CLR), but going forward changes are expected to be minimal. Meaning MoonLight will easily keep up with SilverLight. And besides, since its a mini-CLR now, you could derive a lot from the original Mono effort.
Though voice is more accessible and helps blind people, for the vast majority of non-blind users it is simply very inconvenient.
Many years back, I got a shuffle when I wanted a tiny MP3 player. It drove me nuts, and I bought a Sansa; same size, but comes with a screen and some useful features.
Just about every tiny MP3 player has a screen these days, but Apple is probably having the NIH syndrome.
.NET might be OK, if you are restricted to some very simple func.... 8859-1 coding, and the XML interface used.... Python and PyQt
All.Net strings have been unicode since it launched (in 2002), Python got there recently (yes, I write Python for a living these days). And.Net's XML support can only be compared to Java, and the newer releases (3.0 & 3.5) move beyond java in performance and capabilities. Just about everything, from Framework Configuration, to Serialization (pickle?), to Remote Method Calls use XML in.Net. In fact, there is so much XML that I hate it.
You made a very lame comment, and possibly got modded up by some people who have never ever used.Net.
I just read through it, it makes several strong references to child pornography, couldn't find anything on "regular" porn though.
But anyway, this worldwide erosion of rights and freedom impacts the rich and poor countries alike. Except that in a country like India, you would have fewer voices speaking out because of other issues which are more important (like Hunger for instance). Such laws become tools for any state to silence dissidents.
You could silence critics by jailing them for looking at Porn. wow.
At his sister's wedding, Michael Corleone tells his then girlfriend Kay Adams the story of how Don Corleone helped his godson Johnny Fontane. Michael explains that his father went to convince Les Halley, the bandleader, to release Johnny from a personal service contract that was holding back Johnny's singing career. Halley refused both the initial offer of $20,000 and the following offer of $10,000, completely missing the significance of that lower offer.
No it isn't like ActiveX. It is exactly like Flash.
What makes it interesting (to me as a developer) is that I can program applications for Silverlight in any langugage, say Python. And many others. This is a big win for developers, compared to Flash which speaks only ActionScript.
That reduces its suitability for making dynamic websites, because Mac and Windows users don't have a free browser plugin to run them with.
1. Normal users don't care if the plugin is open-source or not. 2. Almost all Windows users will use Silverlight, even if there is Moonlight available. 3. 0. "Dynamic websites" will still run, does it matter if it is Silverlight or Moonlight?
Moonlight being available on all platforms like Mono is good, but I doubt if the team has enough developers to support a group of people who will fit into an auto rickshaw.
Slashdot Mirror
India and US have a lot in common, outside trade and commerce. Like Free Press. Unrestricted Internet. Real courts. Democracy. I could go on.
Similarly, we have a lot of respect for other democratic countries. It is not always about money.
AMD is not done, in fact quite the opposite.
2011 will have some of AMDs most anticipated releases ever, Bulldozer and Bobcat. Also decent graphics are no longer a luxury, it is a necessity even in phones and tablets. Intel makes terrible graphics cards, while AMD makes the best performing ones available today. 2011 will see more widespread adoption of integrated CPU+GPU solutions (from both Intel and AMD), and guess who will hold the advantage there.
a nation state with polytheistic Hindu as it's official religion
I don't know where you pulled that out from. India has no official religion.
Our Prime Minister is Sikh (about 2% of the population). The most powerful person in the country is an Italian-born christian woman.
Our President (mostly a ceremonial post, with few powers) is Hindu, and vice-president (another ceremonial) is Muslim.
I don't know where AC is from, but we are pretty proud of the fact that we are "genuinely" multi-cultural.
To the point that we are willing to elect someone to the most important office in the country, irrespective of religion.
I couldn't agree more.
To our left is Pakistan and Afganisthan (two of the most dangerous countries in the world).
And another on the north, which has a firewall on their entire population and doesn't even have a free press.
These guys are right next door, not a couple of oceans and a continent away.
Also, freedom of speech, dissent and media is reasonably well protected here.
It is difficult for the government to come up with any Orwellian scheme.
This is going to get down voted to hell. But anyway.
Here is Miguel's opinion on this development.
I hope the Mono hating will finally stop now.
In Asia? What a sweeping generalization. There are not many countries in Asia which has the kind of censorship China has.
I just hate this line of argument, which is unfortunately too common.
Article on how HIV/Aids is a big problem in Africa.
HIV is a big problem in the US too.
1. -- Insert significantly affected country here. --
2. Insert _relatively_ marginally affected country here.
3. Claim the situation is very similar, and hence the article to be moot.
4. Profit!!
In China, every day broadcasters are summoned by a Govt. agency to tell them what can be published, or should be taken off. This includes even cultural news, entertainment and other seemingly innocuous news - because they prefer such control being absolute.
While the three points you raised are relevant, they are not important enough to justify your conclusion about "language polish".
* Adding extension methods without also adding extension properties
The objective of extension methods was to support LINQ, with the capability to extend a class being just a bonus.
It was not the primary motive.
* Refusing to implementing covariant return types
Covariance and contra-variance are addressed (somewhat) in the upcoming version 4.0 (out March 22nd, 2010)
* Adding type inference, but disallowing it for class method return types
Important, but considering that type inference works in the vast majority of cases - this is not such a big pain.
Scala is not without its problems
1) Performance (Though not an issue in most projects, but perhaps more important than the arguments above)
2) C# Expression trees are insanely powerful; eg: Type Safe SQL.
another possibility: Code that gets automatically distributed across machines if the dataset is more than 1GB.
If you know LISP, you know that Code-as-Data is magic. And C# brings that to a mainstream programming language.
The numbers don't add up.
About 35 million netbooks are on track to be shipped in 2009.
That's about 20% of all shipments.
If linux is a third of netbook volume, overall linux market share (through netbook sales alone) is about 6%.
Add 2% for Linux on regular desktops and notebooks.
Linux share @ 8% of all new PCs shipped calls for celebration. But I doubt it.
Google this - "c# expression trees"
In our current project, we optimize C# code at runtime to run database queries faster. This is possibly only because the C# compiler turns that code an expression tree that can be analyzed at runtime (and then compiled, converted to sql etc).
But why was this attack needed when Mono is trying to split itself into "Guaranteed, patent free components" and "Gray areas"?
The Patent Free parts are covered by the legally Binding Microsoft Community Promise
Some parts of it:
Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is complian....
To clarify, "Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.
Is this Community Promise legally binding on Microsoft and will it be available in the future to me and to others?
A: Yes, the CP is legally binding upon Microsoft. The CP is a unilateral promise from Microsoft and in these circumstances unilateral promises may be enforced against the party making such a promise. Because the CP states that the promise is irrevocable, it may not be withdrawn by Microsoft. The CP is, and will be, available to everyone now and in the future for the specifications to which it applies.
Having the Linux version of
Microsoft's standard be clearly inferior will just make Linux seem clearly
inferior (and justifiably so).
Mono isn't chasing compatibility with proprietary Windows Libraries. Instead, the focus is on the language/compiler implementation, runtime and important parts of the Base Class Libraries. You should read this post, which was quite popular recently.
Actually the bigger Mono projects don't even work on Windows. So, doesn't that suggest that developers who write code on Mono don't really care about proprietary Windows mechanisms?
Microsoft needs to make the first move.
Why? There are doing well considering there was a recession, and Windows 7 looks like a winner.
Note that Windows is more proprietary, more shackled than ever before.
Err. How? Hasn't it always been closed source? Or is there an "Extremely Closed Source" classification?
I love open source, and use linux on my primary desktop. But I am not going to whine about Microsoft not doing enough for open source.
So your world is divided into "people who agree with me" and "mindless zombies".
I read it twice. Miguel was not saying that. Who modded you +5?
Stallman is a functional programming stalwart. Unix in general has had functional programming for a very very long time.
Not disputing either, but Stallman's statements had nothing to do with how useful Mono is. I was just pointing out what Mono brings to the table.
The reason C# is remarkable is that there are millions who are familiar with it (perhaps not the functional parts, which is somewhat new). There is no purely functional language (on any platform) with enough mind share to qualify as "popular". Popular sometimes has its advantages when working in a team; documentation, resources, tooling, availability of developers ... etc.
We have Java, as well as Python and various other languages on Linux for the niche Mono wants to fill
Actually Mono fills a niche not satisfied by any other language on Linux.
1. Python - too slow for any processor intensive tasks (I do a lot of python myself.)
-- not strongly typed, if the project decides to go that route.
2. Java, the language - No closures, lambdas, generators. Impossible to do any declarative programming. Many, many people hate it.
C# brings functional programming to the masses, and Mono brings C# to Linux.
I have great respect for America's determination to protect freedom and free speech. That word means a lot to you, as it does to me.
But wait, before you call it a Tiananmen square "massacre" - do you consider that ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND people are now dead in Iraq. Last week, a drone killed 140 people in Afganistan, mostly innocents.
So, as opposed to thousands of their own people killed by the Chinese, you went to another country and killed much much more.
I am not saying it is worse; just saying that taking a stance on moral issues is difficult. And often becomes very subjective.
Moonlight 1.9 is available as a preview, and is compatible with SilverLight 2. Not that there are any SilverLight websites I visit, but it is available if you badly need it.
SilverLight 2 is a massive departure from version 1 (for instance, it now includes the CLR), but going forward changes are expected to be minimal. Meaning MoonLight will easily keep up with SilverLight. And besides, since its a mini-CLR now, you could derive a lot from the original Mono effort.
Where can I download the source code from? Or, am I missing something here?
Though voice is more accessible and helps blind people, for the vast majority of non-blind users it is simply very inconvenient.
Many years back, I got a shuffle when I wanted a tiny MP3 player. It drove me nuts, and I bought a Sansa; same size, but comes with a screen and some useful features.
Just about every tiny MP3 player has a screen these days, but Apple is probably having the NIH syndrome.
.NET might be OK, if you are restricted to some very simple func.... 8859-1 coding, and the XML interface used.... Python and PyQt
All .Net strings have been unicode since it launched (in 2002), Python got there recently (yes, I write Python for a living these days). And .Net's XML support can only be compared to Java, and the newer releases (3.0 & 3.5) move beyond java in performance and capabilities. Just about everything, from Framework Configuration, to Serialization (pickle?), to Remote Method Calls use XML in .Net. In fact, there is so much XML that I hate it.
You made a very lame comment, and possibly got modded up by some people who have never ever used .Net.
Here is a copy of The Bill.
I just read through it, it makes several strong references to child pornography, couldn't find anything on "regular" porn though.
But anyway, this worldwide erosion of rights and freedom impacts the rich and poor countries alike. Except that in a country like India, you would have fewer voices speaking out because of other issues which are more important (like Hunger for instance). Such laws become tools for any state to silence dissidents.
You could silence critics by jailing them for looking at Porn. wow.
At his sister's wedding, Michael Corleone tells his then girlfriend Kay Adams the story of how Don Corleone helped his godson Johnny Fontane. Michael explains that his father went to convince Les Halley, the bandleader, to release Johnny from a personal service contract that was holding back Johnny's singing career. Halley refused both the initial offer of $20,000 and the following offer of $10,000, completely missing the significance of that lower offer.
You know what happened then.
No it isn't like ActiveX. It is exactly like Flash.
What makes it interesting (to me as a developer) is that I can program applications for Silverlight in any langugage, say Python. And many others. This is a big win for developers, compared to Flash which speaks only ActionScript.
That reduces its suitability for making dynamic websites, because Mac and Windows users don't have a free browser plugin to run them with.
1. Normal users don't care if the plugin is open-source or not.
2. Almost all Windows users will use Silverlight, even if there is Moonlight available.
3. 0. "Dynamic websites" will still run, does it matter if it is Silverlight or Moonlight?
Moonlight being available on all platforms like Mono is good, but I doubt if the team has enough developers to support a group of people who will fit into an auto rickshaw.