> And why should we do so? I still don't see what .Net offers
> what FPC can't do better without adding another dependency on
> Microsoft.
Because there will be no more Win32 API use from Microsoft in the future.
Given that in Vista about 40 out of 2000 core libraries are .NET,
and that none of the Office suite is written in .NET, I guess
that is a far far future. If ever. But that aside:
Vista is the OS and has to maintain backward API compatibility with previous
Windows etc.
More and more GUI stuff of the OS will be in .NET though.
I'm speaking of MS new APIs and products.
I don't think Office Live etc. is not written in .NET btw.
Basically what you are saying is that we need .NET because
Microsoft forces everyone to use it on Windows.
Microsoft has notified that they're moving (not jumping) to .NET for various
reasons (including security - the buffer underrun/overrun etc. are a classic
C plague for example). They don't jump to other technologies without a
transition path, nor abandon older technologies in one day (would be a
nightmare for their customer support). Don't have same experience with Apple
and IBM though (was using OpenDoc on Mac and Windows at 1997 and it just
died off forcing us to rewrite E-Slate [e-slate.cti.gr] in Java)
There is no problem with accepting that, but at least one
should be honest about it, and not try to desperately find
any pseudo-reasons why .NET is a technically good and sound
architecture...
I don't see why one would consider Win32 API a better architecture than
.NET. My experience is different (I've been programming from 1986-87 or
something on various languages and platforms including microprogramming and
bytecoding by hand)
I run SuSE Linux. SuSE was bought by Novell.
Novell has also bought Ximian, which make Mono and Evolution
on top of GTK. This is immediatly visible:
- KDE support is going down the drain.
All previously SuSE supported KDE development is cut short in favour
of GNome, despite the architectural superiority of KDE.
- The new management tools ("ZenManager" etc.) run in Mono.
They are a disaster. I switched to smart package management because of
it.
(written, if I'm correct, in Python ;) )
The point being that big companies push you in the direction which
is in their interest, not because it is necessarily better from a
technical point of view.
Once more, no problem with that - business is business - but be honest
about it.
Novell should have a reason to do move to a platform that follows the
CLR/CLI etc. specs (afterall MS doesn't endorse mono and various [esp.
marketing] people in MS through lament against it saying its a copycat
etc.). The reason is in my opinion interoperability (they eventually will
benefit by having all .NET apps run on their platforms too and vice-versa,
so that their OSes and platforms will be a viable alternative choice for
customers that just hate MS or its pricing or fear dependency on MS - also
customers will also not fear getting too much attached to Novell since
they'll be able to move to other platforms more easily than before)
Obviously their tools aren't mature yet, that's why you see bugs etc. As for
Python, it's just a language in my opinion, not a platform (there's a
compiler for .NET too I think for it btw). I don't like it that everyother
language comes with a ton of libraries that one has to learn. The libraries
should be language independent as much as possible and be able to use them
from any language (ala .NET assemblies)
========================
George Birbilis ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Microsoft MVP J# 2004-2006
Borland "Spirit of Delphi"
http://www.kagi.com/birbilis
_________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
"unsubscribe" as the Subject
archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
