Why Mono Is Desirable For Linux

[frantaylor]

you don't have a coherent goal

MY goal is to invest my development time on a platform with a viable long-term future.

MY goal is to make sure the time and money I invest in learning a new platform is going to pay off.

If I had invested my time In these other Microsoft technologies, I would have WASTED it. Actually I DID end up spending a LOT of time learning "Visual Basic" and "Microsoft Access" and those skills are now worth ZERO.

Do you talk in monotone in real life? Well maybe you do because you speak "mono"! REAL HUMAN BEINGS can put inflection in their speech.

[droste]

(Disclaimer: This is just my opinion!)
I have more or less no opinion regarding mono but I have to say that C# is "Java done right" (especially the 4.0 and 4.5 version of C#).
I programmed Java for years and was quite happy with it. Last year I started programming C# (because I had to) and now I'm in love with it and really dislike Java and how some things are done there.
I believe that every programmer that _really_ used C# and Java would say the same.

Regarding why Microsoft hasn't switched everything to C#:
1. Probably because it's not that easy to rewrite the work of years (the same reason why there are still COBOL programs out there)!
2. They are probably smart enough to know that you should choose the right tool for the job. For example: If you need high performance you go with a low level language. If you don't care about performance and it's just a small piece of software use a scripting language, if you try to be platform independent you use a language that compiles to bytecode and run it in a VM, etc...

[directhex]

MY goal is to invest my development time on a platform with a viable long-term future.

As long as that code gets thrown out with sufficient regularity? "Microsoft is CONSTANTLY pushing out patches to fix security issues in 20-year old C++ code."

MY goal is to make sure the time and money I invest in learning a new platform is going to pay off.

So if you'd started with C# in 2002, when it shipped, you'd no longer be able to write it today, right? Right? Right?

If I had invested my time In these other Microsoft technologies, I would have WASTED it. Actually I DID end up spending a LOT of time learning "Visual Basic" and "Microsoft Access" and those skills are now worth ZERO.

ActiveX shipped in 1996, and can still be used today on the latest version of MSIE.

Which high level Linux frameworks from 1996 are still in use today, exactly?

If you're learning one specific framework without learning transferable skills, then you have only yourself to blame.

Do you talk in monotone in real life? Well maybe you do because you speak "mono"! REAL HUMAN BEINGS can put inflection in their speech.

I don't start RANDOMLY SHOUTING in the middle of conversations, no.

[frantaylor]

So if you'd started with C# in 2002, when it shipped

I'd have been using a development environment that was only available at the time on Windows.

ActiveX shipped in 1996, and can still be used today on the latest version of MSIE.

AND NOWHERE ELSE!

Which high level Linux frameworks from 1996 are still in use today, exactly?

MOTIF shipped in the MID '80's and can STILL BE USED TODAY on A WIDE VARIETY OF PLATFORMS,

In fact it is STILL supported and STILL maintained actively and you can get development support TODAY with a phone call.


Oracle has been on Linux for many many years! They have an extensive application development environment.
Shoot, there is a WIDE variety of professional grade SQL databases on Linux, ALL of them have been around for 20 years or more.

If you're learning one specific framework without learning transferable skills, then you have only yourself to blame.

So ***I*** am to blame for Microsoft's inability to provide long-term stability? Nice to know!

I don't start RANDOMLY SHOUTING in the middle of conversations, no.

you just did!

[RealNC]

Which high level Linux frameworks from 1996 are still in use today, exactly?

Qt comes to mind. (It appeared way before 1996, 1992 to be exact, so if your question really is about 1996 specifically, then I don't know.)

Also, does Gtk from 1998 count?

[frantaylor]

Qt comes to mind. (It appeared way before 1996, 1992 to be exact, so if your question really is about 1996 specifically, then I don't know.)

Also, does Gtk from 1998 count?

Really are there ANY deprecated development environments on Linux? They are ALL still around. I can pop in one of my old SLS disks from 1995 and ALL of those tools are still around and still supported. Perl, C, C++, scheme, Motif, they were all available then and they are still available now, with support even. Your programs from back then will still work today.

Good luck to you if you have an old Visual Basic program from back then. Might as well throw it out and re-write it.

If you actually want to make money in this business, you have to realize that customers don't want to throw out their code every 5 years to catch the latest trend. Heavy industry runs on 20 year cycles at least. They expect that kind of lifespan out of their equipment and they expect no less from their computer systems. I know of many companies that still run OpenVMS on Alphas because that is what they bought in their last cycle and they are still getting value from their systems. They've already been burned by Microsoft when all their old Visual Basic code was deprecated. If you want to get the business of these companies then you have to provide a non-Microsoft solution because they don't want to get burned again.

[jrch2k8]

as much as monos whine no serious FOSS project will switch to C#[or whatever other #] with or without Mono and that is a fact, for commercial stuff maybe since most of them don't give a rat ass about quality as long they can sell it fast and produce it cheap.

what i believe can have a real boost in linux would be Python over LLVM[instant Mono HeadShot] since python is risk free and already have bindings with everything you can think of and very well known and widely used already beside the fact is DE/library independant unlike Mono

[frantaylor]

as much as monos whine no serious FOSS project will switch to C#[or whatever other #] with or without Mono and that is a fact, for commercial stuff maybe since most of them don't give a rat ass about quality as long they can sell it fast and produce it cheap.

what i believe can have a real boost in linux would be Python over LLVM[instant Mono HeadShot] since python is risk free and already have bindings with everything you can think of and very well known and widely used already beside the fact is DE/library independant unlike Mono

My experience with writing interpreted GUI applications is that the program is burning 1% of its cycles on the interpreted code and 99% of the cycles in the underlying framework, so accelerating the interpreter is not going to give much of a performance boost.

Nevertheless it is still an excellent idea. Many of those gnome programs for system administration are already python scripts, it sure doesn't slow them down.

Perl also has bindings for everything in the world, choosing between them is not too bad, you win either way.

[hoohoo]

T

...

After giving up on Mono, I moved to C/C++ and Qt, and discovered that it is a comparable solution to .NET. Eventually I moved more towards writing web code in Python/Django, and desktop apps in Python/PyQT, and whenever I need extreme performance, I just port functionality to C and call it from Python. Vastly superior to C# on Windows or Linux.

It's worth remembering that C-octothorpe and .NET were an attempt by MS to push C & C++ out of the Windows developer mainstream: thus closing the platform by eliminating all those pesky competing C & C++ compiler vendors.

[Detructor]

Oracle has been on Linux for many many years! They have an extensive application development environment.
Shoot, there is a WIDE variety of professional grade SQL databases on Linux, ALL of them have been around for 20 years or more.

which has nothing to do with .NET or are you really comparing those Oracle forms to .NET? I seriously hope not, because that'd mean that you've really no clue what you're talking about. And yes I once had to work with that stuff. Never again.

also: Access? Visual Basic? Who the fuck would ever use that, aside from the first time you tried it and saw how bad it is/was. (yes, I know, there are enough developers out there that think connecting to a MySQL database through Access is a good thing)

And as someone who coded and codes both Java and C#: C# is better. Regardless about which point you are talking.

As for mono: The only bad thing about that is, that they (the company behind Mono which I'm not able to spell correctly) aren't porting WPF. That stuff is so friggin awesome.