> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:ADVANCED-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Miguel de Icaza
Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to post. I realise you're probably very busy.
> > Even so, I do believe that if Mono could "just run" .NET apps, it
> would put
> > Mono, GNU/Linux, and .NET all in much stronger positions. The fact
> that it
> > can't means that you can't treat an application as independent of its
> > platform, even though we're /so close/ to that with .NET.
>
> You are making a storm in a teacup.
Possibly. (And it wouldn't be the first time.)
I fully accept all you say about designing for portability, and the relative
effort/ease of porting to Mono.
That's not really my point though. I maybe haven't been getting it across
well, but my point was that I think that if .NET developers have to port at
all, Mono has lost what could be a huge win.
I think (and I know others disagree) that many smaller development shops
faced with porting to Mono just won't bother. I've no sources to cite on
this, just my experience. This means, I think, that there's a growing
collection of.NET applications out there that users would find useful, but
that will never be specifically ported to Mono.
I'm struggling to find the right metaphor to explain why I feel that relying
on porting, and relying on an awareness of other platforms, is always going
to limit Mono. I'm not sure I've found a good example, but here goes:
It's like browsers. It's like having to write pages for IE, and other pages
for Mozilla, and still other pages for both. Yes, lots people do this every
day, and coding around browser differences are an accepted part of the job
for web developers. But there are far, far more people out there that just
write pages in whatever tool they have (FrontPage etc.) and have no idea
there are differences between browsers. That's where I believe Mono should
be aiming - at the mass of people who just use tools (Visual Studio or
FrontPage) without concerning themselves over differences in platforms.
Just as the more specialist web developers can have separate coding for
Mozilla, the more specialist web developers can have separate libraries for
Mono to take advantage of its strengths. But it's not a requirement to port
pages to Mozilla, and often pages run just fine in Mozilla without their
author even knowing of its existence.
At the minute, Mono isn't ready for this. It's like a browser that you have
to write pages specifically for because it can't handle all the web pages
that exist. That's not to say it'll never be ready, but it's not ready at
the minute. And getting there will be very difficult, not least because of
P/Invoking and the moving target of Microsoft APIs. If/when it gets there,
I think it'll be an order of magnitude more useful than it is now.
Is this a storm in a teacup? Yes, possibly. It's just my opinion, and
years ago you said something like "opinions don't matter, writing code
matters". I'm still not in the position to back up my opinions by writing
the necessary code. But I'm always happy to share my opinion (and hopefully
learn something in the process).
All the best,
Geoff
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