Microsoft's CoreCLR Now Works On FreeBSD

[corzo]

To answer your question, C# is a decent language. If Microsoft had made it cross platform from the beginning, then it would be much more popular than it is today. Now, it has that chance. And, since it isn't directly controlled by Microsoft anymore, a lot more people will come to use it.

This is not the first "decent", "cross-platform" language which got released under an open source license recently. And nothing really changed in the linux world.

However, in this case, c#'s main framework, .net, is not fully open source nor cross-platform. This, added to the lack of proper development environments outside windows, makes it difficult for it to be useful in those platforms.

[Luke_Wolf]

This is not the first "decent", "cross-platform" language which got released under an open source license recently. And nothing really changed in the linux world.

Actually this is the first actually important language/platform to be open sourced recently. .NET has had very widespread use on Windows and some marginal use on Linux, while it's true we had Mono before and so at the moment "nothing has changed", for how we run software, if you don't think coreCLR and Roslyn bring anything new to the table you don't have any understanding of what's going on.

However, in this case, c#'s main framework, .net, is not fully open source nor cross-platform. This, added to the lack of proper development environments outside windows, makes it difficult for it to be useful in those platforms.

Okay where exactly is this particular lie originating from? .NET is an ECMA standard, and while it's true that CoreFX does not contain a full implementation of the .NET yet, you can use Mono in it's place for the time being. .NET itself is also completely Cross-Platform, what is not cross-platform are a few platform specific GUI libraries, but no GUI libraries are defined as falling under .NET so that's the equivalent of saying C++ isn't crossplatform because win32 exists and is widely used. Additionally anything written purely in .NET with no native dependencies is guaranteed to be cross platform, where you get in trouble is that as things currently stand GUIs touch native code one way or the other. So that native code has to be cross platform for that GUI .NET application to be cross-platform.

Also MonoDevelop is a perfectly fine IDE for .NET for Linux and other platforms, and is quite wonderful for anything having to do with C#, It doesn't handle ASP.NET particularly well I'll give you, but Monodevelop is actually better than the base Visual Studio for pure C# code as it has functionality equivalent to resharper and a few other plugins that I'd otherwise have to pay for.

[corzo]

Actually this is the first actually important language/platform to be open sourced recently. .NET has had very widespread use on Windows and some marginal use on Linux, while it's true we had Mono before and so at the moment "nothing has changed", for how we run software, if you don't think coreCLR and Roslyn bring anything new to the table you don't have any understanding of what's going on.

I was thinking about the java platform. And I don't think anything changed in the linux world after it being released open-source 6 or 7 years ago.

Anything written purely in .NET with no native dependencies is guaranteed to be cross platform, where you get in trouble is that as things currently stand GUIs touch native code one way or the other.

That's the problem. The fact is that you can't easily avoid those native technologies when writing "real" .net apps. Why would a .net developer bother himself struggling with opengl or qt when he can use the libraries he already knows and microsoft supports such as directx or winforms? Of course for pure console applications there won't be any portability problems, but do you think c# provides anything python or the usual technologies don't?

(And it's not a lie, winforms is just an example of a closed .net api)

Also MonoDevelop is a perfectly fine IDE for .NET for Linux and other platforms, and is quite wonderful for anything having to do with C#, It doesn't handle ASP.NET particularly well I'll give you, but Monodevelop is actually better than the base Visual Studio for pure C# code as it has functionality equivalent to resharper and a few other plugins that I'd otherwise have to pay for.

MD is slower than VS, its completion features are subpar, formatting is a pain and now with UnityVS being free there're even less reasons for using it. And that's what most .net developers think, as VS is cited, even here at phoronix, as one of the top reasons for going with microsoft's stack instead of the alternatives. I think this is all in line with microsoft purposes, seeing linux only as a deployment platform but not as a development platform. Hey, they still need to sell some windows licenses.

[Luke_Wolf]

I was thinking about the java platform. And I don't think anything changed in the linux world after it being released open-source 6 or 7 years ago.

Well if you look at it from an extremely macroscopic point of view and only big name programs of course you'll think nothing changed. The reality is there's been a significant shift in Java's direction exactly because it was open source, and the class of technology it is.

That's the problem. The fact is that you can't easily avoid those native technologies when writing "real" .net apps. Why would a .net developer bother himself struggling with opengl or qt when he can use the libraries he already knows and microsoft supports such as directx or winforms?

Why indeed? Particularly as OpenGL is harder than DirectX, and he already knows WinForms. Why for that matter should any developer target anything other than Windows? Answer that and you'll answer the reason he needs to learn Qt or OpenGL.

Of course for pure console applications there won't be any portability problems, but do you think c# provides anything python or the usual technologies don't?

... And now you're making me think you're not a developer, and that perhaps you don't understand the software ecosystem at large (which perhaps is also why you think Java being open source had no impact). The world is not split between Desktop GUI applications and trivial console applications. Some of the most complex programs are headless.

(And it's not a lie, winforms is just an example of a closed .net api)

WinForms is not a part of .NET, WinForms is a win32 wrapper library that Microsoft bundles with the desktop version of .NET

MD is slower than VS, its completion features are subpar, formatting is a pain and now with UnityVS being free there're even less reasons for using it. And that's what most .net developers think, as VS is cited, even here at phoronix, as one of the top reasons for going with microsoft's stack instead of the alternatives. I think this is all in line with microsoft purposes, seeing linux only as a deployment platform but not as a development platform. Hey, they still need to sell some windows licenses.

Um... What? Have you ever actually used Monodevelop? Literally everything you just said about it was false.

Monodevelop is significantly faster than VS to start up (which in VS's case takes at least a minute or two, whereas Monodevelop is about as fast as any normal program to start up), and project loading is about the same. If you stick to C# MD's tooling is significantly better than basic VS, I don't need to purchase ReSharper or other VS plugins in order to get the refactoring and code formatting because they're all built in. Now what is true is that Monodevelop's ASP.NET and XAML support is poor, but that will improve over time as a function of usage. Monodevelop basically has StyleCop or an equivalent built in so I don't even have to think about formatting as it fixes everything for me.

[corzo]

Well if you look at it from an extremely macroscopic point of view and only big name programs of course you'll think nothing changed. The reality is there's been a significant shift in Java's direction exactly because it was open source, and the class of technology it is.


Why indeed? Particularly as OpenGL is harder than DirectX, and he already knows WinForms. Why for that matter should any developer target anything other than Windows? Answer that and you'll answer the reason he needs to learn Qt or OpenGL.


... And now you're making me think you're not a developer, and that perhaps you don't understand the software ecosystem at large (which perhaps is also why you think Java being open source had no impact). The world is not split between Desktop GUI applications and trivial console applications. Some of the most complex programs are headless.


WinForms is not a part of .NET, WinForms is a win32 wrapper library that Microsoft bundles with the desktop version of .NET



Um... What? Have you ever actually used Monodevelop? Literally everything you just said about it was false.

Monodevelop is significantly faster than VS to start up (which in VS's case takes at least a minute or two, whereas Monodevelop is about as fast as any normal program to start up), and project loading is about the same. If you stick to C# MD's tooling is significantly better than basic VS, I don't need to purchase ReSharper or other VS plugins in order to get the refactoring and code formatting because they're all built in. Now what is true is that Monodevelop's ASP.NET and XAML support is poor, but that will improve over time as a function of usage. Monodevelop basically has StyleCop or an equivalent built in so I don't even have to think about formatting as it fixes everything for me.

I can't see any significant shift in java's direction after being made open source (excluding the fact that Sun went into bankrupcy and some projects didn't make sense anymore). It already had widespread adoption in some areas, specially at the corporate environment because of its quality and the ability to "write once run everywhere", no matter what kind of application you made. But the Apache Software Foundation was already there, so was SWT, Eclipse, Spring and all this open source movement around it. However, it's not a popular language for creating Linux tools, utilities or applications, as python, c, c++ or even perl are.

WinForms is not a part of .NET? I really don't know. I can only see what Wikipedia says about it -Windows Forms (WinForms) is the name given to a graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework- or the section where it is included inside the MSDN. But hey, it was just an example.

No doubts lots of big applications are headless. Particularly web applications which are everywhere these days. That's what microsoft is making truly cross platform here. But I still don't think we the Linux users will benefit from the other parts because they are still deeply tied to the windows platform; and even if they're not, they're often used in conjunction with other technologies which we won't see here soon (maybe never).

Yes, I have not used Monodevelop nor Visualstudio for a while. But that was my perception and the time, and making some "vs vs md" google queries leads you to recent arguments where my points are still there. Obviously, we're talking not about plain C#, but using the full microsoft stack.