On 10-Aug-2000, Brent Fulgham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > You can download it here:
> > http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/#sdk
> >
> > There is a C# compiler and runtime environment in the SDK.
> >
>
> Thanks for the link! Unfortunately, its click-through
> license forbids disassembly, reverse engineering, and a
> raft of other endeavors that one should be allowed if they
> were truly interested in global acceptance.
Unfortunately this is pretty standard stuff for proprietary
software. I have certainly made it clear to Microsoft that
licensing conditions are a significant impediment to them being taken
seriously by academics.
> [stuff about poorly written C# stuff]
I think most of the C# press has been written to impress VB and C++
programmers. I also find it shockingly written and hopelessly
uninformed. But I'm sure the intended audience thinks it's just
wonderful.
> > Microsoft spent around $2M funding a bunch of groups working
> > on research and industrial programming languages to give
> > feedback on their work. (Haskell, Mercury, ML, Scheme, Oberon,
> > Eiffel, Python, Oz, etc...) While they acknowledged from the
> > start that getting any changes (apart from tailcall) into
> > version 1 was pretty unlikely, they have been listening,
> > taking notes, and even now the C# folks are getting
> > excited about the idea of putting generics into the language.
> >
> Well, that sounds good. Are you speaking from personal knowledge
> here? My concern is that although they may have spoken with
> these various teams, I really don't see much in C# that looks
> like they took any of the comments to heart. In fact, it looks
> like they took J++, changed the name, and added a few nasty things
> (like labeled "gotos").
They didn't really want any feedback on C#. C# was always going to be
what it is, another simple object-oriented C derivative language.
I'm kind of annoyed they released C# at the same time as all this other
stuff, because everyone is focusing on the "new language" when the real
interesting stuff is under the hood.
What is underneath C# is a runtime system that can run lots of different
languages. That's what they wanted the feedback on. C# is just one
language that runs on it, MS will also run C++ (well a lot of it) and VB
on it. Other vendors will run their own languages on it. You get cross
language debugging, data-level interoperability, unified memory
management, etc. It's a bit like the JVM without the insistance that it
be 100% Java.
Oh, yes I am speaking from personal knowledge. Mercury got some of that
funding.
> In fact, if they were interested in learning anything, why
> did they solicit feedback so late in the game?
There's often some sort of assumption that because they are rich and
powerful, they are also omnipotent. By the time they figured out they
should do this, got a budget for it, shortlisted the groups,
flew around the world and explained it to 20 different groups, signed
non-disclosure agreements, and gave out the work they had done so far,
quite a bit of time had passed.
> The thing that really bothers me is that they claim that ".NET
> will be available on Windows (C) and other systems". But they
> have no reference implementations available for non-Windows (C)
> environments. When Sun released Java, we had Unix and Windows
> versions available right away, and the Linux Blackdown port
> shortly thereafter.
Yes, but real support for Linux has been very slow in coming from Sun,
as Linux is a competitor.
I don't really expect MS to release a non-Windows implementation.
But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they decide to pay someone
to do a Linux version (possibly even an open source version).
> Thanks for your feedback, Tyson, but I'm afraid I still don't
> see much to recommend it. And .NET's heavy dependence on older
> MS technologies (such as COM objects, etc.) is especially
> distasteful.
AFAIK there is no dependence on COM. There is builtin COM interop, in
much the same way that you can have CORBA interop in Java. (You
shouldn't believe everything you read on Slashdot).
Of course apps might depend on COM, but that's a different issue.
I'm not trying to convince anyone to use it. That's Microsoft's
job. I'm mostly interested in fostering the good ideas that are in .NET
and making sure they become popular and widespread. I'd love it if Sun
took the good bits and put them straight into JVM 2.
--
Tyson Dowd #
# Surreal humour isn't everyone's cup of fur.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] #
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd #
