Is Microsoft 'Reaping the Rewards' From Open-Sourcing Its .NET Core? (infoworld.com)
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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."
It worked for us... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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In fact the various interoperability would have been immediate because anything with a web browser could run it.
Yes, because in real life it totally works like that.
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It's a great way to deploy software... until your 'net connection dies.
Then you're fucked.
I'll stick with my local tools, thanks.
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* The .NET Framework has been the main Microsoft programming environment since some years ago
When Microsoft rewrites Office in .Net, give us all a call.
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When Microsoft rewrites Office in .Net, give us all a call.
That would be a huge undertaking, and a waste of time if it was just to satisfy some Internet argument. The fact that they haven't rewritten all that existing code is not evidence that the original statement was wrong.
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You're an idiot. No one doing server-side processing is running their code in a browser, even if there is output that might be viewed in a browser. I don't know that C# is quite ready for HPC, but you definitely aren't doing that in browser.
Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? (Score:2)
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
Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Indeed. MS playing nice today != play nice tomorrow.
Look at all the snoopware and install tricks they played with Windows 10 recently. The Gatesian Evil still lurks in the culture of that corporation.
The cheese may be delicious, but that doesn't mean you are not inside a trap.
Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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.
Re:Maybe it's people fleeing Oracle? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'm wary of making a commitment by anything Microsoft. The
Windows 10 may be technically ok (actually, not even that since its update have created lots of problems: Net not working...) but they made a few very user-hostile decisions and that's why I don't like it.
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You must be joking:
- Phones/Tablets: 99+% on open kernels Linux & BSD.
- Mainframes: PPC Linux
- Supercomputing: Linux
- Business apps Mostly on the cloud, running on Linux
- IoT / motor-control: Hardened linux / RT Linux
Do you notice your circles shrinking rapidly?
All that's left I'm aware of is:
- Game development
- A few business apps that are local-intensive: CAD etc
Anything else?
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Please hold your breath while you look for an example of MS making a development tool available and then charging a license fee for its use after the fact. Take a couple hours to be thorough. And make sure to hold your breath the entire time.
what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has been pretty honest and well-behaved when it comes to .NET since the start:
That's pretty amusing considering .Net started because they got sued for forking Java, so they make a Java clean-room clone and went with that.
That said .Net has gone it's own way and Microsoft has been much better behaved lately. But to say it's been so "since the start" of .Net is a massive retcon.
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sun had originally promised to make Java an ANSI/ISO standard, and they broke that promise, turning Java into a proprietary standard with an open source implementation. Sun had also promised to make Java a good platform for GUI applications, something else they utterly failed at. I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java, and Sun was confirming how dishonest and untrustworthy they were with their lawsuit.
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun's problem with GUI applications is that they didn't understand them. They had a big machine mentality, not small PC mentality. They never caught on that GUIs are quite like realtime apps, and response at the keyboard and screen really matters. Their notion of creating and freeing "graphic objects" was guaranteed to make GUIs look like they were swimming in molasses.
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I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java,
Using Sun's trademark without permission? Selling something inferior to Sun Java as Java, diluting the value of the brand? You think those were justified acts? How long have you been on the Microsoft payroll?
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How is calling your compiler "Visual J++" using Sun's trademark?
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so Microsoft Visual C++ dilutes the "c++" brand? Microsoft Visual Basic the "Basic" brand?
C++ and BASIC aren't branded.
AFAIR Microsoft called their own Java version "Microsoft Java", running on the "Micosoft Java Virtual Machine" (MSJVM).
And yet, Java was still a registered trademark. I can't just go forth and sell Martin Espinoza's Coca-Cola, or drinkypoo's Disney On Ice.
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Correct. That's because they are actually open standards.
That's only more evidence of Sun's duplicity, since they had promised to make Java an official, open standard, which would have meant giving up control of the trademark.
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is probably one of the best, on par with Qt, 'technologies' for GUI applications, and that since far over a decade.
You must be living under a rock. (Or must have a pretty weird idea how 'good gui programming' looks like.
I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java, and Sun was confirming how dishonest and untrustworthy they were with their lawsuit.
That is bollocks. M$ did the embrace, extend, extinguish tactics with Java by "adding" unportable extensions. Java programs written for the MS platform where no longer 'compile once run everywhere' hence Sun sued: rightfully, both in legal as in moral sense.
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And that's why the Java desktop [google.com] has been such a smashing success? [google.com]
I understand why you say that: Java and Qt are nice for GUI development from a programmer's perspective. But what counts with GUIs is how well they function for users, and java isn't doing too well there
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Microsoft has been much better behaved lately
*cough* Windows 10 *cough*
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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:
Because it's completely a reversed position from what they had before. See the "halloween letters" for example. It took a long time for the Open Source virus to infect Microsoft, but it's there now.
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, if you have been in a coma for 20 years and just woken up, this change in position may surprise you. To the rest of us, it's been a pretty gradual development.
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It has been happening gradually even under Ballmer, but Nadella really kicked it into high gear and made it an explicit top-down strategy throughout the company.
Some parts of it aren't even readily obvious. For example, did you know that Win10 ships SQLite in the box, as a serviceable OS component? (meaning it'll get security updates via WU etc). So any Win10 app can depend on that.
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Yes, IBM incidentally went down the same route about a decade before Microsoft, from ultra-proprietary and litigious to open-source supporter.
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made legal commitments not to assert any patents
The devil is in the details. If Google had did to .NET what they did to Java, do you think they would have been covered? I think not. The promises are limited in scope.
For instance, the Open Specification Promise [wikipedia.org] only applies to conforming implementations, something Google intentionally violated when they made their tweaked variation of Java.
The promises are a legal landmine. They cover only certain technologies, including only certain versions of technologies, sometimes only certain groups (such as open so
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The next step might be Google joining Microsoft's .NET Foundation.
Oh wait...
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/11/16/1642201/google-joins-microsofts-net-foundation [slashdot.org]
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I suspect Microsoft would have been delighted - just as Sun was
Sun may have put on a brave face, but they weren't particularly happy about losing control of "mobile Java" to Google. They tried working out a licensing deal early on and failed, and knew [arstechnica.com] they were going to lose a lot of licensing money to Android.
As for Microsoft, we'll never know. But we do knew Microsoft has a cutthroat culture and are a bunch of corporate assholes. They can be trusted just as much as Oracle.
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The covenant is reasonable [wikipedia.org]:
The OSP is limited to implementations to the extent that they conform to those specifications. This allows for conformance to be partial. So if an implementation follows the specification for some aspects, and deviates in other aspects, then the Convent Not to Sue applies only to the implementation's aspects which follow the specification.[3]
That's reasonable. It allows implementors to implement whatever they want of the spec. All it is saying that you can't just implement some ot
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That's reasonable. It allows implementors to implement whatever they want of the spec.
And as soon as you fall off the spec, those patents aren't covered. Whether Google would have run afoul or not would depend on how they deviated, as in did they use any of the patents in non-conforming material.
Note that Android manufacturers are already paying Microsoft licensing fees for open source software that they are shipping
Showing that Microsoft is more than happy to use the patent hammer when it suits them, so you'd better be careful you don't step over the lines Microsoft has laid out.
Finally, any patents relevant to most of .NET are expired or soon expiring, so they don't matter anymore.
Is that so? Because .NET keeps evolving and new patents keep on being filed. Just take a look at the list [microsoft.com] of patents. I picked [google.com] one of
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You are misreading what that clause means. That clause simply means that Microsoft only grants you patents that are necessary for implementing the spec, no more and no less. That is exactly what such a covenant should look like. If you disagree, try to formulate a better version of the same clause.
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...[Microsoft] made legal commitments not to assert any patents....
And you have been suckered in by Microsoft's double-speak. Microsoft promised, at best, to not sue you for patent violations when you use a particular version of certain parts of .Net Core. They reserve the right to sue you later for using a slightly different version of those same parts of .Net Core, and to sue you for using the parts of .Net Core not covered by the patent pledge. They're just waiting for you to become dependent on their product before springing the trap some years down the road.
This i
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would they need/want to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" a platform that they themselves created?
Furthermore, what objectionable things has Microsoft done over the last decade?
Over the last decade, in what way has Microsoft been worse than Oracle/Sun or Apple? How does anything Microsoft has done compare to the major fuck up represented by Oracle/Sun's API copyright claims?
Seriously, I understand the Microsoft hatred; they badly misbehaved in the 90's, but that time has long since passed. They have lost their monopoly and they are struggling, and they are behaving accordingly.
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Seriously, I understand the Microsoft hatred; they badly misbehaved in the 90's, but that time has long since passed. They have lost their monopoly and they are struggling, and they are behaving accordingly.
Forcing spyware installs? Fuck that. They are still 100% evil and anyone who trusts them is dumber than dogshit.
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"Evil"? Grow up, kid. Their software has run millions of businesses (including the one I work for) for decades.
So, you're part of the problem? Thanks a bunch.
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This may shock you (Score:2)
Outside of Linux (or at least, most flavors of Linux), other operating systems have just as much, if not more "spyware" embedded, and has had it far longer than Windows. You think Google gives Android away without getting its share of "telemetry" and user data? Let's not even discuss Apple and the walled gardens of iOS and MacOS/OSX.
Most of the stuff Windows sends home is telemetry... debugging information used to gauge performance and recognize ways to improve the OS (most modern operating systems do this)
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Serious question: in today's software environment, is there anything that *doesn't* phone home to report on usage and habits?
No, that is not a serious question, it is an irrelevant question in this context. That is only a minor subset of what telemetry does. It can do full screen grabs, capture all keystrokes, capture packets... it is way way WAY beyond that.
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You mean like Ubuntu, iOS, OSX, and just about any other OS on the planet that links you into advertising networks and package repositories? If anything, Microsoft has been late to the spyware party.
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Why would they need/want to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" a platform that they themselves created?
Because if someone is on a non Windows platform and can use .NET it means they don't get any money for that. So the strategy is to get everyone hooked and have all your codebase slaved to .NET. Then later they add "extensions" or changes that forces you to move to the Windows platform if you want to use the latest features which are only available on Windows.
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It has never mattered to me what extensions Microsoft added to C, C++, or Python on Windows. Why would it matter to me what extensions they add to C# on Windows?
Re:what's so "unthinkable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
OOXML.
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OOXML is a lousy spec, but in what way is it nefarious or anticompetitive for Microsoft to define their own XML format, have it standardized by ECMA, ANSI, and ISO, and then comply with the RAND policy of those standards bodies? Keep in mind that's the same set of bodies and the same set of commitments that Sun refused to make.
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Have you got amnesia? They stacked the committee with their "partners" to gain passage for a deliberately terrible document format. I don't give a flying fuck what Sun did or didn't do. The fact is that Microsoft played its same old game of undermining a standard, so I have no interest in using any of its technologies to underpin any of my work. Microsoft is fucking evil, always has been evil, and always will be. Last time I checked, I don't need .NET for anything, so I feel no reason whatsoever to use any
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what objectionable things has Microsoft done over the last decade?
Windows 10
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No ECMA/ISO/ANSI standard,
How does that relate to patents at all? MP3 has an ISO standard, and you still need to license the patents. Being an open standard isn't neither here nor there.
Also your knowledge of patent law is weak, a patent can be unenforced for years, and then later begin to be enforced. So whether Microsoft has done so in the past is not relevant to what they will do in the future. It may be an indication of how 'nice' Microsoft is, but that's not the question: the question is how safe you are legally if Microsoft
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If you think Microsoft is a "gift horse" of any kind, or is generous without having ulterior motives, then they are not only very different from the Microsoft of the past, but from almost every company out there. Microsoft is all about its own bottom line. If customers happen to get served useful products or the state of the art in the industry is advanced, that's OK, but those ends absolutely orthogonal to Microsoft's goals. This has always been the case, and it hasn't changed.
Take advantage of these op
Is Microsoft reaping benefits here? (Score:5, Interesting)
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hopefully to the mutual benefit of their bottom line and the open source community.
This is why open source licences are so important. OS projects need to protect themselves from exploitation, and companies need to signal their commitment with an appropriate licence.
Microsoft is positioned for success with c# (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft is positioned for success with c# (Score:4, Interesting)
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/9675/is-unity-engine-written-in-monoc-or-c.html [unity3d.com]
"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 [unity3d.com]
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Yes, and your point? Unity games are built on C#, mostly. Javascript, aka UnityScript is far more difficult to maintain through the changes in the framework code and tends to be brutally ugly. C# has the added advantage of getting support from Microsoft's own Visual Studio tools.
While the engine itself is coded "close to the metal" using C/C++ to generate native binaries, all of the game in Unity (and a good chunk of the editor, as well) logic relies strictly on C#-generated IL.
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That is the implementation of the game engine. ... as other posters claimed here.
All 'game code' is c# and/or JavaScript, AFAIK, a special c# compiler. Not one that compiles to CIL
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So wrong.
The advantage C/C++ has is that it compiles to native language binaries, while C# compiles to "IL" - a "bytecode" type binary. Native binaries will always be faster, but have to be created for each platform by the code maintainer. C# "binaries" work on any platform that has the equivalent .NET framework available, which is pretty much every platform these days (including iOS, Android, Mac and Linux through Mono). IL is interpreted... but at times runs as fast as native code because it may be better
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Native binaries will only be faster if you have an optimization guru, otherwise garbage collection will win over more traditional memory management solutions.
It's a trap (Score:4, Funny)
It's a trap!
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Something haters have been saying for 15 years about .NET, and yet nothing has sprung, other than Microsoft selling lots of server licenses and MSDN licenses to big corporations, as well as actually maintaining a presence (albeit small compared to AWS) in the cloud with its Azure platform.
It would be stupid and pointless for a company to wait this long to "spring a trap" - Oracle notwithstanding, because they've been working the Java legal gravy train for years against Google, and now the rest of their user
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Of course it is. Its Microsoft. Their whole empire is built on lock-in.
How much is because of Oracle? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:not quite correct (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
int vs float vs double (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:int vs float vs double (Score:5, Interesting)
Definitely. If javascript is the first language, people have no clue how to structure things, what types are, that an object is more than a collection of stuff... it's a great glue language if you want to bang out a few lines, it's a disaster if you want to write solid production code. Just look at all the "add-ons" like typescript that adds in concepts like type checking that you get for free in any decent language.
Re:int vs float vs double (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wouldn't you say that the same problems wrt. type-lessness applies to Python? It not, why?
No, because Python has strong typing and Javascript doesn't.
Python: 1 + "2" => error
Javascript: 1 + "2" => "12"
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Bzzz. Python isn't typeless, it's dynamically typed.
If you want typeless, look at assembly languages, or FORTH.
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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.
Re: not quite correct (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Python and Perl are solid options, arguably Ruby will pass but then Python and Perl glue in C/C++ code to give a good combination of ease and performance. Honestly,
Re:not quite correct (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:not quite correct (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:not quite correct (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:not quite correct (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Windows device driver for a special PCIe card receiving continuous 80MB/s data from an image sensor into system RAM.
But if you could get that working in Javascript, you would be a programming god. A god whose coming was foretold in papyrus scrolls inked in blood:
"And Lo! When the seas boil and the Jester becomes King, a dark and terrible god will be born, and He will write Windows drivers in Javascript, and the world shall tremble at His passage."
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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.
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> There is nothing you can do with it today you can't do faster with native code
Which is not the point of the product, at all.
The only point of this effort is to allow you to use your existing .Net code on other platforms. It does that fairly well.
Other *really* means iOS and Android. I have used the iOS version and it does what it is supposed to, building apps that use native UI with our .Net business logic below. I don't know if the Android version is as good, but I can't imagine why it would not be.
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The point of this effort has nothing to do with existing .Net code. It's an acknowledgement that the desire to be cross-platform was preventing people from using .Net. And yes, now that Microsoft's priority is Azure (or perhaps, preventing Amazon from rendering Microsoft irrelevant as a future platform), they're less worried about making money selling .Net tools than they are about developer mindshare. That's not a bad thing, I guess - though you share your mind with Microsoft at your own peril...
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It has been supported for a while now. The most recent version of F# tooling for VS also supports Core projects.
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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)
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Obviously I am bias against them
That's your answer. If you think it won't work right or as well simply because of its association with Microsoft (which is looser now due to the .NET Foundation being an independent organization), and you took more time to make your comment than it would take to type "why .NET" into a search engine, then you don't care about facts and don't need us to tell you.
Re:Mono (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
In that time, Microsoft have made good on their promise not to sue regarding patents and Mono.
The fact that you're saying this *is*, in fact, the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that you're saying this *is*, in fact, the problem.
Only in your imagination. In the real world, that makes no sense at all. Microsoft have committed themselves to their patent promise and this would undermine any attempt to take legal action that was in violation of that promise.
I don't think that you realise just how many standards are out there that are covered by patents, but have been accompanied by a covenant not to sue. This isn't just an idea that Microsoft made up.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Those who think it's a trap will always believe the only reason it hasn't snapped is too small a catch. As long as people shun Mono, Microsoft will not sue. When people are committed, Microsoft will sue. I don't think you can win that argument. That said, my impression is that most companies are bastards when they're the top dog. It's only when they're the underdog they want grand alliances, standards and interoperability. So the only way to win is to abandon old allies as they abandon us and support the ne
Re: (Score:2)
Java's penetration is still massive. Even if Java is in decline now (a claim I see little evidence for) it has already achieved the same status as COBOL, which means it is so embedded, particular in the enterprise world and in major financial systems and the like, that it will be around for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft haven't changes since they tried to take over the world wide web with IE only websites and forsing people to pay for windows when they only wanted a pc without windows so that they could install linux or anything else
The problem with that is that Microsoft never made website developers make sites that only worked with Internet Explorer; that was just laziness by the developers. As for making people pay the Microsoft Tax, there has never been a time when you haven't been able to buy a computer that didn't come with Windows. That doesn't mean that every PC maker had that option, just that there was always some way for people to buy a system to run Linux.
And besides, that was a VERY long time ago. If Microsoft haven't chan
Re: (Score:2)
Developers didn't make IE-based sites because they were lazy, they did it because for a long stretch of after Netscape's collapse IE was the predominant browser, and because it was so horrible and broken, a great deal of effort had to be put in to making the workarounds work. It was only as alternative browsers, Firefox, and then later Safari and Chrome, crushed IE's dominance did Microsoft finally go "Oh my, we'd best make some changes."
As it is, IE is still around, a sort of COBOL of our age, and Edge is
Re: (Score:2)
Well, because it's a corporation. There was a time in the US at least when corporate leaders adopted at least the pretense of good citizenship, but the quite open consensus today is that a corporation should be an amoral profit machine which should draw the line only at what they can't actually get away with.
You shouldn't trust Oracle on Java either.