MonoDevelop vs. Xamarin Studio IDEs

[brosis]

On top of which Java is a language designed by megalomaniacal control freaks which has resulted in it being an absolutely shitty language to have to write in while C# is actually nice to it's programmers because it lacks the stupid control freak atttitude which means you get nice things, like operator overloading.

Could you please be specific about what "megalomaniacal control freaks atttitude(sic)" is in Java and where specifically?

You look like another C#/MS reasonless fanboi, should I add you to the microtrojan list rightaway?

Oh because Sun Microsystems bribing the major universities so that Java developers would flood the market with it's utterly shitty language driving it's usage was so much better. Honestly Microsoft has done a hell of a lot better job at what Java is supposed to be trying to be than Java is.

No, because Sun actually cared their specification is kept open and nobody produces a Java machine, that make use of proprietary extensions. You can read rest on wikipedia, its there for years.
I don't use C# crap, but use Java, so Sun did a hell a lot better job because its everywhere, unlike .net - which is microsoft only. No, MONO is NOT .net.

Also Microsoft isn't aggressively pursuing other non-MS platforms with .NET (they haven't even ported their own .NET framework to a non-MS platform, all they did was the initial agreements which resulted in Novell creating mono) even Xamarin isn't honestly doing so (where's the BBX and other OS ports?), Digia is the only one aggressively pursuing supporting everything. Also Microsoft is making mono more complete by opening up parts of it's own .NET framework under the Apache license which mono is then integrating.

Yes, microsoft has coughed up some cash for Miguel to write second class, patent-insecure, incomplete implementation that targets specifically non-ms systems. Miguel tried to attack Android, but Google did not care. He tried to invade Linux desktop, but a hefty majority boycotted his "effort". Now he tries to attack MacOS with his "parts".

Regarding Digia, yes, they do, they offer LGPL patent-free toolkit official for every single platform, which relies on solid patent-free proven and acknowledged language.

I thought what offended you about Mono is that it's *not* Microsoft-only, i.e. it's on non-Microsoft platforms?

Even when coding in crippled .net like MONO on non-ms platform, you still load a DLL and execute an .EXE.

When I used Microsoft in the past, it felt like my hands are covered in dirty sh!t.
Right now, when I discuss MONO with you, I feel the same way.

Javascript. TCP/IP. DNS. TLS. PPP. SSL. USB.

Extensive knowledge of MSDN you have, microsoft troll.
No, none of the listed technologies was invented or implemented by MS.
ZERO.
Javascript - Netscape "port" of Java.
TCP/IP - Stanford/UCL.
DNS - SRI/Stanford.
continue by yourself

What, by calling morons morons? That's frowned upon in most PR manuals.

Aside from being pro-microsoft trojan and troll, you are breaking forum rules.

Nobody, not a single person ever, has ended up in the scenario you describe, where they use Microsoft.NET because they started off with a cross-platform Mono solution but found that only Microsoft could offer them esoteric components that they needed. Nobody. It's an imaginary scenario, dreampt up by fanatical anti-Mono campaigners, disseminated by anti-Mono campaigners, and pushed by anti-Mono campaigners.

MONO lacks DRM and WindowsForms, and is not protected against patent trolling. It is not official.
When I "discovered" Mono, I found a crapload of dlls and exe in my system, weighting more than 300MiB and being much slower even than Python.
I gladly associate myself with cautious and aware people, who remove the crap known to cause dangers to freedom, without even arguing or going into compromises.
If your puppet master microsoft runs you, that's not my problem, I am not a puppet.

Microsoft.NET is not "full version Mono" - Microsoft.NET is "a crippled Mono that only runs on Windows". You really don't understand the psyche of FOSS developers if you think otherwise.

There was .net, and there was a payment to Miguel to write an inofficial .net clone.
The clone is set to attack non-microsoft platforms by means of infiltration and integration - without bringing original technology in crossfire, should something go wrong.
It is also completely dependent on .net standards, it is fueled by "happy opensource fools" workforce and never implements something that breaks "compatibility".

Unlike the old case of CP/M and its microsoft clone - QDOS , the patent system now works and will prevent clone from replacing original solution via higher usage rate.
When microsoft desires so, it will pull on the wire and MONO will back off.

[directhex]

Even when coding in crippled .net like MONO on non-ms platform, you still load a DLL and execute an .EXE.

What's the obsession with file extensions? Should I freak out because .jar files are actually .zip?

.NET assemblies are not Windows executables - they just share the file extension (as per the specification) because Windows is too stupid to easily allow another executable file format.

[quote]When I used Microsoft in the past, it felt like my hands are covered in dirty sh!t.
Right now, when I discuss MONO with you, I feel the same way. [/quote

You're a sad, strange little man

Extensive knowledge of MSDN you have, microsoft troll.

That's not MSDN.

No, none of the listed technologies was invented or implemented by MS.
ZERO.
Javascript - Netscape "port" of Java.
TCP/IP - Stanford/UCL.
DNS - SRI/Stanford.
continue by yourself

They've contributed towards, and implemented, everything. And say they *might* hold patents on them.

Plus your Javascript one shows a complete lack of knowledge of computing history. Look up ECMAscript, and ECMA-262.

Aside from being pro-microsoft trojan and troll, you are breaking forum rules.

Why is it okay for you to call me a "pro-microsoft trojan and troll" and not okay for me to call you a moron? Only one of us is telling the truth.

MONO lacks DRM and WindowsForms, and is not protected against patent trolling.

Right, wrong, and wrong, in that order.

DRM is not a feature of .NET either.

WinForms is implemented. The source is here

Microsoft have a patent pledge in place covering Mono, and issue a patent grant for all the code they release for use with Mono (like ASP.NET MVC). There is literally no software for Linux with more patent protection from Microsoft than Mono.

It is not official.

I thought it was a secret Microsoft plot?

Make up your mind. Either Mono is part of Microsoft or it isn't.

When I "discovered" Mono, I found a crapload of dlls and exe in my system, weighting more than 300MiB and being much slower even than Python.

Liar.

Mono has never, in its history, been able to take up that much disk space. It's something I closely monitor. A "full" Mono install is less than half the size of a "full" Java install. A minimal Mono install is a few meg, only a couple more than a minimal Python.

And as for speed, Mono is 20-100x faster than Python, as per any benchmark.

I gladly associate myself with cautious and aware people, who remove the crap known to cause dangers to freedom, without even arguing or going into compromises.
If your puppet master microsoft runs you, that's not my problem, I am not a puppet.

You're about as smart as one.

You're also incapable of imagining a world where people disagree with you without being paid by TEH EVIL MICRO$HAFTZ. That's sad.

There was .net, and there was a payment to Miguel to write an inofficial .net clone.

Novell were paid to write an official Silverlight clone. That's it. Anything else is the product of a deranged imagination.

The clone is set to attack non-microsoft platforms by means of infiltration and integration - without bringing original technology in crossfire, should something go wrong.

What does this even mean? Is it meant to be English?

It is also completely dependent on .net standards, it is fueled by "happy opensource fools" workforce and never implements something that breaks "compatibility".

You can extend the .NET spec a lot without breaking compatibility. Mono has plenty of features missing from .NET - REPL, SIMD, not to mention the cross-platform aspect.

Unlike the old case of CP/M and its microsoft clone - QDOS , the patent system now works and will prevent clone from replacing original solution via higher usage rate.
When microsoft desires so, it will pull on the wire and MONO will back off.

Except the various patent pledges in place mean they can't.

And if you don't trust those pledges then be careful - they're the only thing that says Microsoft won't assert their TCP/IP patents on you

[ciplogic]

(...)
When I "discovered" Mono, I found a crapload of dlls and exe in my system, weighting more than 300MiB and being much slower even than Python.
I gladly associate myself with cautious and aware people, who remove the crap known to cause dangers to freedom, without even arguing or going into compromises.
(...)

So, I have the latest Ubuntu and a lot of Mono software. My footprint on disk is 162 MB. This includes the software we discuss like MonoDevelop, with a lot of things that most users don't use. So your numbers are B/S. In comparison, I have installed just QtCreator (that I do sometimes simple programs with it). QtCreator and Qt dependencies (so no other Qt packages on my machine): 345 MB. So arguing in disk space, I would argue that removing Qt is a better bussiness.

But let's say it will be 300 MB (not Mono Runtime which is in some few MB). Would it matter that much?

The second part of your B/S: May you say a case where Python is faster than Mono? How you measure this performance? I can make a program to show that signals and slots (C++) are much slower than delegate calls in C#, because I understand how QMake and MOC works and how in C# a delegate is basically a pointer that is checked for null and after that a direct call is made, when in Qt the signals/slots have a richer semantic so they have to be checked and they are tens of times slower than a virtual call (the Qt documentation specify that can be a bottleneck in performance!).

I understand that even than Qt has a slower signals/slots call speed, is a bit faster than Mono because it has a bit better optimizer, and it doesn't check array bounds checking (which some are optimized by Mono runtime) but this is another talk. But slower than an interpreter?

[Del_]

So Mono does not run (well) on Windows, so as long as Mono exists, seems that if Mono exists, the platforms that it support they are good as targets. You can write COM+ code (like WinRT code) that is Windows only and is C++, and you can write very portable C# code (like Pinta project). Also, Microsoft makes sure that Linux interoperates well with Windows HyperV virtualization.

As for the sites that work with the latest Ubuntu and Moonlight: look for a MVC3 Pluralsight tutorials: they work flawlessly on Moonlight! And you can learn parts that Qt does not support: customizable http views with MVC3/Razor, DB persistence with Entity which the last Mono does support! Try it: http://pluralsight.com/training/Cour...net-mvc3-intro

Thanks for the information, regretfully the web-sites my family would be interested in still does not work (for various reasons). I am very impressed by the progress of Mono and how much of .net is now supposedly supported, but I cannot escape the fear that Mono is doomed to playing eternal catch-up. In any case, as I said, I am very grateful to every Mono developer that provides this framework on linux with their best intentions. Xamarin on the other hand needs to be guided, fast.

Silverlight is just about dead anyway, even the DRM lock-in seems to be falling into pieces these days with Netflix full support on Android. It still keeps Netflix away from me and my family mind you, and it is one of the services I was hinting at. In any case, five years from now chances are that Silverlight is dead and burried, at least that seems to be the direction of Microsoft on the subject after the Windows Phone 7 failure.

HyperV is another example of Microsoft coming late to the party. I am pretty sure their linux support is only a consequence of them trying to be relevant for virtualization. Look around you, just about any relevant tech company the last decade is built on linux. The financial sector turned their back to windows after the London Stock Exchange fiasco. Without support for linux, HyperV would be dead on arrival.

[jayrulez]

This has nothing to do with religion, please do not bring the discussion down to that mud-throwing level. For me it is pragmatic, my life is too short to risk it on a framework designed to lock customers into Windows. I have no doubt mono developers see it differently, and I respect that. Steve Ballmer has been very vocal on this point. Microsoft sees any line of code written for another platform as a loss. As such it is very healthy to keep skepticism of the new Microsoft, which still has it's old management. Do you think an old dog learns new tricks?

Pragmatism would be using the right tool for the job no?

How does using a framework equates to risking one's life?

If Mono was designed to lock customers into windows, then Mono would only support Windows don't you think?

Just because Steve Ballmer sees it that way does not mean that is the way it is. Steve Ballmer has been known to be wrong about many things.

Let me give a little background info on where I'm coming from. At the company I currently work for, my job is to implement solutions based on the clients needs. I use various technologies to do this without discriminating against any technology because of the company from which it originated. For clients that are heavily invested in the windows ecosystem, I usually end up using C#/.NET, MSSQL, C++, C etc...

For other clients I use C++/Qt, Java, C#/Mono, C++, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL and anything else that fits for the current project.

I do not tell clients to migrate from C# to Python or from C# to Java because C# originated at Microsoft.

I once encouraged and convinced a client to implement PostgreSQL instead of Oracle DB because PostgreSQL was sufficient for the project and they would circumvent the large licensing cost from Oracle.

I view these technologies as tools. Different tools are better at different tasks. I would not try to use a flat headed screw driver to drive a phillips screw while I have a phillips screw driver available just because the phillips screw driver was made by a particular company that I may not like. The flat headed screw driver may work but it is not as efficient at driving phillips screws as a phillips screw driver is.

That is pragmatism.

At work I use both Linux and Windows, which one depends on the task I am performing. I have no Qualms about using Mono. Sure Microsoft may decide one day to go thermonuclear and Xamarin/Mono... On the other end, they may not. That is not something I will sit and worry about. Let Xamarin worry about that. In the same sense, I may die in a car accident any day while I'm on the road, that does mean I try to avoid using public roads or motor vehicles. The house I live in may collapse on me while I sleep because of an earthquake in the night, that does not mean I will sleep outside in an open area to avoid that. For similar reasons, I will not avoid tools and products from certain companies because they may turn "Evil" on day.

[Luke_Wolf]

You should probably inform the idiots at Google about your discovery. Why on earth did they choose Java for Android?

I would love to know this too actually, because the rationale I've heard in various quotes from the recent trial and such lead me to think it was a purely political decision made by Java developers. It's sounded like one of their requirements was that it had to be a managed language but why Java over C# in that case? I don't know, the statements don't really explain beyond that. Personally I probably would have done it in C++ and Qt, but I can understand wanting a managed language. Of course then they could have thrown their weight behind C# and Qyoto.

Keep in mind that Microsoft has put its full financial muscles behind pushing .Net on the world. Microsoft saw attracting developers as absolutely critical for the success of their ecosystem. The really astonishing part is that regardless of this technologies like Qt surfaced from underdogs to level the playing ground.

Yep they've definitely been pushing .NET, however them pushing that is better for both us and them. Why do I say that? Well because it gets people off of win32 and moves them onto a largely open spec. Yes developers can still target win32 under .NET, but part of the point to my understanding is for them to not do that. Which is better for us as it allows better portability

That is not true. They ported Silverlight to Mac, and then due to existence of Moonlight marketed it as cross-platform. I have yet to find a web-site where moonlight works. This part of the history makes me furious (not furious with any moonlight developers mind you), as you see, I use GNU/Linux exclusively, and it shut me and my family out of a number of relevant web-services. You have dual-boot maybe since you are so casual on the subject?

Well I don't use Netflix (Hulu fills the role nicely enough), and I haven't encountered sites that use silverlight beyond that so while I can understand you having issues with it, it hasn't really effected me. That said I do dual boot but that's only ever for games, although I've been thinking some about using visual studio 2012 express under windows, but to be clear everything but games that don't work properly under WINE (and potentially in the future a level of .net development), I use linux for.

[Del_]

Pragmatism would be using the right tool for the job no?

If you have a long term perspective, it makes sense to assess risk. I always make a thourough check before basing any development on an open project. Dependencies makes you vulnerable. Simply repeating "right tool for the job" is naive. You may be a young man, I am not that old myself yet, but have already experienced spending a couple of years on a proprietary software that was snapped away from under my nose. I have actually had it happen more than once. I have fairly strong reasons for being careful about what technology I put my bets on, and it is very pragmatic. I did of course not mean that I risked my life literally, the risk is years of work lost on a dead end, I thought that was clear.

If Mono was designed to lock customers into windows, then Mono would only support Windows don't you think?

Mono was designed to give the likes of me access to Microsoft technology on a free platform, or so was stated by Miguel (and I see no reason to doubt the initial motivation). What motivation drives Mono today is a bit of a mystery to me, maybe you can shed some light on that? C# and .net on the other hand..

That is pragmatism.

I would call it earning your paycheck. Not sure what more to put into it.

At work I use both Linux and Windows,

Me too. The only reason is Microsoft's success in continued lock-in. It has created rather large obstacles for me for a decade, and I see no improvement in sight. I much rather prefer a clean linux environment.

[ciplogic]

Thanks for the information, regretfully the web-sites my family would be interested in still does not work (for various reasons). I am very impressed by the progress of Mono and how much of .net is now supposedly supported, but I cannot escape the fear that Mono is doomed to playing eternal catch-up. In any case, as I said, I am very grateful to every Mono developer that provides this framework on linux with their best intentions. Xamarin on the other hand needs to be guided, fast.(...)

It is hard to say why Mono is in catchup? In which way? To support the latest and greatest .Net runtime?

First of all Mono (as GCC for that matter) has a common core with .Net, and some extensions and various features. The page of Mono states it fairly nicely: http://www.mono-project.com/Compatibility
If you compare the latest .Net with latest Mono, most of "catchup features" like AutoNGEN, MultiCore JIT, NGen Profiled Guided Optimizations are Windows speciffic. Support of the core platform are basically released in the same day with VS and with the latest Mono upstream version, maybe 2-3 months later (or earlier, if you would take Linq and Async/Await). So if you want to use Async/Await from the first day in Mono, I don't see why you have to wait to catchup on Mono side.

In fact a feature that I like and as far as I know .Net doesn't have is this: you can set an environment option and Mono runtime will adapt fairly drastically to use Auto-NGEN (MONO_AOT_CACHE=1) and this was supported like some years ago by Mono, you can configure to keep various levels of optimizations (possible in Java command line, but again, is not supported in .Net!). If you want more optimizations and slower startup, you can pick --llvm flag, and you're having C++ like performance for your tight math code and SIMD intrinsics that are CPU neutral (using Mono.Simd). You can instrument your assemblies, functions, etc. using Mono.Cecil using live patching. There is even an iniative that start to bear fruits in the discussed MD, but is a shared codebase with SharpDevelop: NRefactory. This allows to parse big chunks of code and do refactoring and static code analysis. Both of the last topics are damn-hard in C++, isn?t it so? The single refactorings I mostly see in OSS/C++ are extract method and rename. And QtCreator is one of the few IDEs that does it correctly without breaking code!

The last thing where I think that Mono did a great job was that because there is a pressure that some people want to try their Windows code in Linux/Mono, there were some half-backed implementation of WinForms to have something quick&dirty running, but otherwise, I for one I use Gtk# with no issues (with MonoDevelop). MD is a bit crashy as for me, but is good enough for a medium project.

[directhex]

Mono was designed to give the likes of me access to Microsoft technology on a free platform, or so was stated by Miguel (and I see no reason to doubt the initial motivation).

Very few people actually cite the original motivation for Mono. Those who do tend to get it wrong. Here's the actual intention, from early 2002:

 * From: Miguel de Icaza <miguel@ximian com>
    * To: [email protected], gnome-devel-list@gnome org
    * Subject: Mono and GNOME. The long reply.
    * Date: 06 Feb 2002 01:06:50 -0500

Hello everyone,

   I am sorry that I have not been able to respond earlier.  I would
like to apologize to anyone who might have been confused about my
strategy with Mono and what I am trying to do.    Also, I want to thank
everyone on the mailing list that has contributed to the discussion, I
used a lot of your ideas on this email.

   Before starting though, I would like to ask my readers to forget
everything they have heard about .NET, because it is a marketing term
used to describe many different Microsoft projects, and there is a lot
of information both correct and incorrect about it floating around.

   My goals with Mono are very specific, and I will address those
shortly, but for the sake of getting things done, please forget
everything you have heard about .NET.  

[snip]

* What is Mono?

	Mono is an implementation of three pieces of technology:

		* A compiler for a new programming language, similar
		  to Java, called C#.

		* A virtual machine for the Common Intermediate
    	  	  Language (CIL) byte codes.

		* A set of libraries that encapsulate useful routines
    		  and classes: from hash tables, to XML manipulation,
 		  to database management, to GUI applications, to web
		  construction tools.

        These are usually referred in the Microsoft world as the `.NET
    Framework' as opposed to .NET.  When I say `.NET Framework' here,
    I am talking about these technologies.   

	Seasoned industry programmers will notice that the above is
    very much like Java and the Java VM.   They are right, the above
    is just like Java. 

	The CIL has one feature not found in Java though: it is
    byte code representation that is powerful enough to be used as a
    target for many languages: from C++, C, Fortran and Eiffel to Lisp
    and Haskell including things like Java, C#, JavaScript and Visual
    Basic in the mix.

	I wish I had the time to go in more detail, but for the sake
    of this argument, the above will suffice.

	Although Ximian can only finance the work of a C# compiler
    (that is all the resource I have at my disposal), I want to
    encourage other people to work on free implementations of other
    compilers.

	I want to encourage other developers to look at targeting
    existing compilers and interpreters to the CLI: JavaScript, Basic,
    Perl, Python, C++, and maybe even get gcc core to generate CIL
    bytecodes.

* The CIL and the promise of language independence:

	Bertrand Meyer (the father of Eiffel) wrote an interesting
    article that encapsulates my excitement about the possibilities of
    the CIL:

	http://eiffel.com/doc/manuals/technology/bmarticles/sd/dotnet.html

	This technology allows programming languages to be considered
    on the basis of how they will perform for a given task, and not
    based on the runtime libraries that you will depend.  Any software
    engineer should read this article:

	http://www.fawcette.com/dotnetmag/2001_12/online/online_eprods/bmeyer/default.asp

	So no longer should a software engineer pick Fortran, because
    that is the only language where his math libraries are available:
    he can now pick the right language for the problem at hand.

* Mono and GNOME.

	GNOME had always tried to have a good support for multiple
    programming languages, because we realize that no matter how much
    we loved C as a programming language, there was a large crowd of
    people out there that would like to use the GNOME libraries from
    their favorite programming language, which might not necessarily be
    C.  

	This strategy has paid off very well.  There are healthy and
    striving Python, Perl, Guile and Ada communities out there that
    use the Gtk+ and Gnome bindings to build applications.  From rapid
    prototyping to robust applications: we wanted to empower
    developers. 

	Keeping language bindings up to date and shipping them on time
    has always been a consuming process, because no matter how
    automated this process has turned out to be, there is still a
    considerable amount of manual work that needs to be done. 

	I do go into more details about this at the following places:

	http://www.go-mono.com/rationale.html

	http://scriptingnews.userland.com/stories/storyReader$1275

* An upgrade to the development platform: Part I.

	Microsoft has terrible APIs to code against.  Anyone who has
    used Win32 and any combination of the various layered cakes that
    have been built on top of it has stuck to that platform only
    because of the size of the market, but it is one of the most
    horrible APIs ever built.

	To make things worse, an evolution of APIs, components, memory
    management contracts and patched up versions of COM have made the
    platform horrible.  

	Microsoft has injected fresh air into their platform by
    building and designing a new programming platform that addresses
    all these pains.  They have incorporated many ideas from Java, and
    they have extended it to address new needs that developers had.
    They took where Java left off.

	Now, the Unix platform, GNOME included has some of these
    problems: our APIs have been evolving.  Libraries have been built
    by disconnected groups (PNG, JPEG, Gtk+, Xml, Bonobo, CORBA spec
    apis, etc) and the end result is that a developer eventually has
    to learn more than he wanted to in the course of developing a
    large application. 

	Ximian funded for a long time the work on the Perl bindings,
    and we had a lot of work going into Bonobo (more than we do today)
    because we believed that this would help us achieve language
    independence and empower scripting language developers (that is
    why we were so psyched about CORBA/Bonobo support all this time).

	When C#, the CLR and the class libraries were launched, we
    looked at that, and we saw how they were solving the problem in a
    very nice way.  At least it appealed to me and others from a
    purely technological standpoint.  This new platform showed a lot
    of promise.

	After much researching and debating, we decided that a couple
    of developers at Ximian will join me in working on a free
    implementation of these specifications.   These people came
    precisely from the cross-language interoperability area: Dick
    Porter had been working before on ORBit and our SOAP
    implementation;  Dietmar Maurer came from the Bonobo development
    world and Paolo Molaro was working on Gtk+/Gnome/Bonobo bindings
    for Perl.  This is the original Mono developer lineup. 

* Evolution, Gnumeric and GNOME.

	I have written and maintained many lines of code as part of
    my GNOME work.  Ximian has developed Evolution which consists of
    roughly 750,000 lines of code. 

	Large software projects expose a set of problems that can be
    ignored for smaller projects.  Programs that have long life times
    have different dynamics when it comes to memory management than
    smaller programs.

	There is a point in your life when you realize that you have
    written enough destructors, and have spent enough time tracking
    down a memory leak, and you have spend enough time tracking down
    memory corruption, and you have spent enough time using low-level
    insecure functions, and you have implemented way too many linked
    lists [1]

	[1] indeed, GNOME uses Glib which is a massive step up from
    the Unixy libc APIs.

	The .NET Framework is really about productivity: even if
    Microsoft pushes these technologies for creating Web Services, the
    major benefit of these is increased programmer productivity.

	Evolution took us two years to develop and at its peak had 17
    engineers working on the project.  I want to be able to deliver
    four times as many free software applications with the same
    resources, and I believe that this is achievable with these new
    technologies.

	My experience so far has been positive, and I have first
    hands experience on the productivity benefits that these
    technologies bring to the table.  For instance, our C# compiler is
    written in C#.  A beautiful piece of code.

	It can be argued that I could be wrong, and that these
    technologies are too new.  But my personal experience and the
    experience of some of my friends with this platform has been
    amazing.   I want to share with others this simplicity.  And I
    want to empower developers: I want to enable a whole class of
    developers to create great desktop applications that integrate
    with GNOME. 

* Why is Mono related to GNOME?

	It is no secret that I have been working on Mono as a new
    platform for software development, and it is also not a secret
    that I want to help the GNOME project with Mono.  This has been
    the plan since the project was announced in July.

	Mono will use Gtk+, Gnome-Db, Libart, Gnome-Print and other
    GNOME technologies as part of its implementation of its class
    libraries, because that is what my team and I are familiarized
    with.

	So when you copy your binary from Windows that was compiled
    with the Visual Studio.NET and run it on your Unix platform,
    it will just integrate nicely with your GNOME desktop.  

	We are also exploring a port to MacOS X, and for that
    particular case, we will integrate with Aqua, not with Gtk+, but
    you get the idea. 

* GNU was based on a proprietary technology.

	GNU is a free re-implementations of Unix.   Linux is a
    re-implementation of the Unix kernel.  Before the advent of Linux
    and the Berkeley Unix, Unix was a proprietary technology, built by
    ATT (which back in the day, was a monopoly).  

	Still, developers took what was good from Unix, and
    reimplemented a free version of it.   Down to the Unix programming
    language: C (which was also invented at ATT).  Even C++ was
    invented at ATT.  

	Think of Mono as following the same process: we are bringing
    the best technology out there to our beloved free software
    platform.  And at the same time it serves to be a magnificent
    upgrade on the development platform. 

* I can not force anyone.

	Whether people in GNOME or elsewhere will use Mono is
    independent of my opinion.  Mono will have to stand on its own
    feet, and will have to convince developers on its own merits
    before it succeeds.

	When I made my comments to the Register reporter, I was
    envisioning that in a couple of years Mono would be a really solid
    technology: a good JIT engine, good class libraries and would be a
    useful platform for innovation: it would allow people to focus
    more on the problems at hand and worry less about the low-level
    details of the platform. 

* Rewriting GNOME.

	Havoc brought up an important point recently, an article from
    Joel Spolsky:

	http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000348.html

	The short story is: rewriting code does not pay off, and I
    agree with the thesis of the article.  Rewriting GNOME in C# with
    the CLR would be a very bad idea, if not the worst possible idea
    ever.  

	But what makes the .NET Framework technologies interesting is
    that they are evolutionary technologies:

	* The runtime can be linked into an application.  

	   Example:

		bash$ cat hello.c
		#include <mono.h>
		main (int argc, char *argv [])
		{ 
			mono_init (argc, argv);
			mono_assembly_load ("classes.dll");
			mono_ves_execute ("Class.Main");
		}

  	   So existing applications can be "extended" with Mono, take
           a piece of code like Gnumeric, and write a new chunk of it
	   using Mono for example.

	* There is no language switch required.

	  You can keep using your fav language, and gradually start
	  writing new pieces of code in another language that runs
	  with all the benefits of "managed" execution. 

	I go into some more detail here:

	http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/2002-February/msg00021.html


[snip]

* Fighting the System.

	The .NET Framework will exist in the Windows world, and
    because of this they will be widely deployed.  It is a pointless
    battle to pretend that boycotting the use of those technologies
    will have any kind of effect on their reach.

	The .NET Framework stands on its own feet, and developers
    in the Windows world love it.  Even if this was not the case,
    Microsoft is using these technologies and distributing to as many
    people as possible.  We are witnessing the creation and deployment
    of a new standard.  Sure, it has a lot of corporate support, but
    it will become a widely deployed technology. 

* Other uses of Mono

	Despite my love for Mono as a tool for writing GNOME
    applications and giving developers new tools to write code in less
    time, there is an extra advantage in having a free implementation
    of the .NET Framework for Unix:

	* Windows developers know how to write code for it.

	* Lets make it easy to bring developers from the Windows world
	  into our platform.

	* Training materials, tutorials, documentation, tips and
    	  tricks are already available in large quantities, lets
	  leverage this. 
	 
* Mono Financing.

	Right now Mono is financed by Ximian because we believe that
    this will reduce our cost of development for future applications.
    And thats why we are really focused on Mono for the desktop
    (amusingly the ASP.NET support in Mono has evolved more rapidly,
    because Gaurav and Leen have been very excited about this, and
    just have been producing code like crazy).

	So even in the Mono world, I do not get to make all the
    decisions: people work on what they are interested in developing.
    
	The Mono community is great!  Lots of passionate programmers
    work with us, and I feel very happy that I have had a chance to
    work with all of them. 

	At this point in time Ximian has only a small team of full
    time developers working on Mono (five) and a lot of the work is
    being done by contributors on their spare time, or hackers that
    want to see the .NET Framework run in other platforms, or
    people who share our enthusiasm for the platform, or people who
    just like to hack on a particular area and just love to code.

	But I would like to hire more full time developers: the open
    source development model is great for getting the fun/short things
    done, but it is terrible to get the long-haul, boring, repetitive
    or dull things done.

	I want to be able to bring more people to work full time on
    Mono.  I would like to offer the services of Ximian as a project
    manager to keep driving this project forward, and get cash
    infusions to hire developers to work on this project.   

	The only restriction is that all of our work has to be free
    software.  But other than that, I am ready to take money from
    anyone or listen to any kind of proposals for making this happen.

	Some people wonder if we have got a Microsoft investment or
    contract (because I like this Microsoft technology).  The answer
    is no.  But I would take one if they wanted to fund my free
    software project ;-)  Man, I wonder what that would be like!  

	Implementing the .NET Framework is a massive effort, and I
    want to enroll as many contributors as possible.  


* API compatibility.

	I believe that the `Embrace and Extend' philosophy is bad for
    users and developers.  Whether its a large corporation doing it,
    or ourselves.  I want to be as compatible as possible with the
    APIs that were published by Microsoft.

	This achieves various things:

		* Allows developers to move back and forth.

		* Reduces training.

		* Helps us leverage existing knowledge.

	Of course, this should not stop anyone from implementing new
    APIs.  And I even encourage people to write new classes, APIs and
    components that will be reusable both on Unix and on Windows.  	

* What if we never can keep up?

	There is the issue that we might not be able to keep up (right
    now, we dont, as .NET Framework 1.0 is already out there, and we
    are, well still underway).  Also, theoretically there is the risk
    of a given API being unimplementable on Unix.

	Even if that is the case, we still win, because we would get
    this nice programming environment, that althought might not end up
    being 100% .NET Framework compatible, it would still be an
    improvement and would still help us move forward.  So we can reuse
    all the research and development done by Microsoft on these ideas,
    and use as much as we can.  

	So far all it seems like everything in .NET can be emulated in
    our environment. 

* Richard Stallman

	I am not sure what people told Richard Stallman about my
    plans.  Given the confusion surrounding .NET, it is very possible
    that people were asking `Miguel wants to depend on Passport' or
    something just as bad as that.

	My only intention is to write applications using the CLI as a
    development platform, which is really not very exciting for a news
    paper to report: "Programmer to use new compiler, new garbage
    collector, news at 11".

	Really, programmer's lives are boring, I wish my life would be
    as exciting as other people's life appear to be.  
	
* Further debate.

	I have just scratched the surface in this email, I do like a
    lot the technology behind the .NET Framework as you might have
    noticed from the interviews, no secret there.  I can go on for
    hours, but I have to set a limit to this email.

	I hope this explanation will get us through, feel free to
    e-mail me if you believe I have missed something or if you are
    interested in contributing to make this vision happen.

PS:

	I would like to thank Nat Friedman for providing moral,
    technical support all these years and his unconditional
    friendship.  It has been a fun adventure.  

	Without Nat I would probably have gone crazy by now.   

PS2:

	I kind of got sentimental after reading all the nice e-mail on
    the GNOME lists. After all, writing software alone is not that
    interesting, the most interesting part is interacting with other
    developers, and watching how community projects grow.

	I would like to thank all the people I have worked over the
    years: every GNOME developer past and present, every Mono
    developer past and present and all my friends at Ximian who have
    created a great place to work.  

	This community is great, and I have loved working with an
    increasing number of people as free software becomes more
    popular.   I know sometimes I have been unreasonable, but I am
    trying to learn from my mistakes.  Am just too good at being 
    mistaken.

Miguel.

[Luke_Wolf]

Could you please be specific about what "megalomaniacal control freaks atttitude(sic)" is in Java and where specifically?

Have you ever actually programmed in Java, and then other languages? If you have then you should know exactly the crap I'm talking about. Stuff like overloading operators, default parameters, choosing to pass by reference, etc where the Java language designers decided "We don't trust the programmers to not 'abuse' these features so we're not going to let them do it". and as I've stated before in another thread even frigging Python has the ability to overload operators and it's a mathematicians wet dream response to perl.

Java's attitude is basically "You will do as we say, how we say it, and nothing more. Now go stab yourself in the hand for five minutes". Which is exactly the kind of attitude that pisses me off at a program architect of any kind. Particularly when it results in all sorts of brain damage.

You look like another C#/MS reasonless fanboi, should I add you to the microtrojan list rightaway?

Actually I'm a C++/Qt/KDE fanboy thank you. C# is simply the first language beyond C++ that I'm not groaning in anguish at the crap design I have to put up with to use it. In fact in some respects I'm preferring C# to C++ but in others I prefer the C++ way of doing things, it's just how it is.

I however HATE java with a passion, and wish it would die in a fire and that it's language designers would be disbarred from programming, because it's so painful to try to work with. It's on that same list of evil languages that are forced on programmers that COBOL is.

No, because Sun actually cared their specification is kept open and nobody produces a Java machine, that make use of proprietary extensions. You can read rest on wikipedia, its there for years.

So bribing universities to exclusively use Java in their CSC programs is caring? Not trying to seed the workforce heavily with Java developers in order to force their shitty language on the world with underhanded tactics? Also Java is now in the hands of Oracle of all monsters...So it went from bad (Sun Microsystems) to worse (Oracle) in terms of ownership. On the bright side Oracle is now doing the right thing and slowly throttling Java to death.

I don't use C# crap, but use Java, so Sun did a hell a lot better job because its everywhere, unlike .net - which is microsoft only. No, MONO is NOT .net.

So... You're saying Microsoft is aggressively trying to push .NET on non-MS OSes and then you agree with what I was saying that, that really isn't the case. So which is it?

Yes, microsoft has coughed up some cash for Miguel to write second class, patent-insecure, incomplete implementation that targets specifically non-ms systems.

You know I never really got this argument. The simple fact of the matter is that it's strongly against the interests of a language designer to assert patents against an implementation of a language. It's one of those things you just don't do if you're trying to build an ecosystem of developers. Now Oracle did it yes, however Oracle bought Sun Microsystems just for the purpose of suing Google, it really doesn't give a damn about the ecosystem itself. However Microsoft wants people developing with the .NET framework, now if Microsoft starts asserting patents against Mono guess what developers are not going to do? Particularly as you can see the effect it's had on the linux application ecosystem that there is that fear there. You've got to look at things from a motivation standpoint not just a what-if standpoint, otherwise you'll sound like just yet another of those crazy people running around with a tin foil hat.

Miguel tried to attack Android, but Google did not care.

Which is why Unity isn't a popular engine on Android , or are you referring to Ximian's making a version of Android in C#? In which case there really hasn't been enough time for Google to care as they're still dealing with the whole Oracle lawsuit thing.

He tried to invade Linux desktop, but a hefty majority boycotted his "effort".

Because people like you spreading the same kind of FUD you like to rail against Microsoft for.

Now he tries to attack MacOS with his "parts".

I'm sorry what? Mono is Cross platform, and has supported OS X since OS X 10.3, which is to say for about 10 years now...

Regarding Digia, yes, they do, they offer LGPL patent-free toolkit official for every single platform, which relies on solid patent-free proven and acknowledged language.

Yep and it's good stuff

Javascript - Netscape "port" of Java.

Okay that is nonsense, and a common misunderstanding. Javascript (I prefer to call it ECMAScript and will henceforth in this section) has java in the name simple because Netscape wanted to capitalize on the "popularity" of Java at the time. ECMAScript is it's own completely different language that has nothing at all to do with the syntax or programming style or even the VM of Java.

Unlike the old case of CP/M and its microsoft clone - QDOS , the patent system now works and will prevent clone from replacing original solution via higher usage rate.
When microsoft desires so, it will pull on the wire and MONO will back off.

Okay no what happened was that IBM wanted DOS, however the implementation they were going after wouldn't sell out to them so they told Microsoft to make one for them, Microsoft bought out a company and used it's product as the basis for creating MS-DOS and then over time replaced all that company's code with their own. There never was a real issue with MS-DOS in that regard.

In regards to microsoft pulling the wire, it's not going to happen, for the reasons I detailed above. It runs completely counter to their interests.