[ale] Hello World - in C# - in Mono - in Ubuntu is done

Brian Pitts brian at polibyte.com
Thu Sep 16 23:15:47 EDT 2010


On 09/16/2010 10:25 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:

So I really don't want to start an argument either, but I do have a few
thoughts.

> So, I think I can certainly make money by learning C#.  I could make money 
> with Java too, but I'm more concerned about Oracle being a corporate evil 
> demon than Microsoft at this point, given their propensity to sue people 
> after acquiring Sun.  The Java community seems to be in an uproar.  Also, 
> Microsoft is under scrutiny by the US Government for potentially anti 
> competitive practices.  That past is not good, but they have to be careful 
> about further activities of that nature.

I do not think you need have any more concerns about writing server or
desktop Java applications than you need to have about C# applications.
Probably you should have less, since there is an explicit patent grant
to compatible Java implementations, and the primary Java implementation
is free software. Mono implements parts of .NET that are not EMCA
standards and is thus at risk. I am not sure how Oracle's lawsuit about
copyright and patent infringement in Google's Dalvik VM (a lawsuit which
I hope fails miserably) is more troubling that Microsoft's behavior.

http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono

> C# is documented and specified in international EMCA standards.  I'm not 
> sure whether anything similar exists for Java.

I'm not incredibly familiar with it, but there is the Java Community
Process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process

> I want my language to be cross platform.  Java is well known for 
> this.  However, through the Mono project, as well as possibly others, it 
> appears that C# is very cross platform as well.

Unless Novell is hiring, I think it is unlikely that anyone will hire
you to develop C# code that runs on anything but Windows.

I suspect that most Java code will run on Windows or Linux, while most
C# code will only run on Windows. It certainly helps that the owner of
Java provides a (free software) implementation of it for Linux, while
the owner of C# does not.

> Finally, I want my language to be able to produce self contained free 
> standing applications.  As far as I know, this knocks out Java.

I don't understand what you mean. Don't you need a JRE or a .Net runtime
to run either Java or C# applications?

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts


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