--- Shannon Roddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, John Hebert wrote:
>
> > If you haven't kept up with it lately, I'd like to
> > report that the Mono project has been making some
> > notable progress lately. Note that since Novell
> > acquired Ximian, Novell is now behind the Mono
> > project.
>
> Novell seems to really be generating momentum in
> lots of different linux
> areas. I think they are going to get most of the
> Redhat business now. I
> know I am dumping Redhat and I am SERIOUSLY
> evaluating Novell/Suse
> products as a replacement.
>
> >
> > Here's a summary of the significance:
> > Using Mono, you can both develop and host C# apps
> on
> > Linux servers, as well as easily port over C# apps
> > running on Microsoft servers to Linux servers.
> Without
> > spending a dime on Microsoft software.
> >
>
> Anything to keep money out of Billy's hands!
>
> One question though... Why would anyone start with
> .net as their
> development platform of choice? What does it offer
> that other non-M$
> languages do not? I know basically nothing of .net
> and C#, so I am just
> curious. It is nice that you can now easily port it
> to linux, but I
> cannot figure out why someone would not use
> something else to begin with.
> Those of you doing M$ development might be able to
> fill me in.
Very, very good question, with a quick answer, though
not a simple one: .NET helps you code faster.
Now granted, my coding experience with .NET is about a
month old and I have only done ASP.NET webapps, but
once I figured out the basics of ASP.NET and the IDE
(VS.NET), I was able to crank out a needed web query
app in a few days and was then able to crank out two
more similar web apps in about an hour each.
Here's why:
ASP.NET consists of classes for most everything needed
to develop web applications, so the web interface
becomes a set of objects that can be manipulated on
the server. Also, state management is handled
automatically by the web server, so you don't _have_
to mess around with cookies if you don't want to.
There is a UI class that is smart enough to detect the
browser and generate the appropriate HTML to render
the webapp interface for that browser. Just like with
any server side include technology (ASP,PHP,JSP,etc.),
the browser sees nothing but HTML, and you can still
use JavaScript on the client if you wish.
Basically, the mundane parts of web app development
become much easier to deal with.
And this is only describing a small part of what is
available. I haven't begun to play around with client
side .NET app devel on MS-Windows, but from my ASP.NET
experience, I think it is going to be much easier than
VB6 coding.
I have to give Microsoft credit where it is due; they
know how to save businesses money on coding time and
frankly, that is what business likes, because
development time is expensive. What bugs me is the
defacto Microsoft lock-in with .NET devel tools and
servers, etc. However, Microsoft released the specs
for much of .NET technologies with ECMA; apparently
they thought no one was crazy enough to actually
_implement_ a free version of .NET using the specs.
They didn't figure on Miguel de Icaza: he is one crazy
mofo.
Here's my simple explanation of .NET using an anology:
.NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun's J2EE, except
Microsoft knows how to develop and market an IDE. And
C# is really just Java with a few extra bells and
whistles. Microsoft had a good reason for this: entice
Java developers to come back to Microsoft.
And this is where the Mono project comes in: a GPL
implementation of the .NET specifications, along with
tools to do development (#develop, plugins for
Eclipse, ASP.NET servers, etc.). Just like Apache and
MySQL are competing with Microsoft for web and
database serving, Mono hopes to compete with .NET. The
goal is complete interoperability with .NET running on
Windows, so apps developed on a Windows VS.NET
platform could be deployed on a huge but cheap Linux
webserver cluster. Or the apps could be developed and
deployed from start to finish on Linux/Unix.
The Mono project is still young, but Mono 1.0 was just
released. I am personally convinced that this is worth
watching.
John Hebert
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