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Mono Developers Go Bye-Bye From Attachmate

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  • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
    Let me give you one: screaming fast scripting engine for games and applications.
    Nice example, more interesting than 'run your existing server-side C# code on an environment other than Windows'. Unfortunately, one of the more prominent examples, Unity3d, isn't working for Linux (yet) afaik.

    Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
    Not only that but the runtime is supported on all interesting platforms (linux/mac/win/xbox/ps3/wii/android/iphone) and is ridiculously easy to embed (unlike .Net which is platform-specific and a bitch to embed).
    I'm fine with having C# on $platform != "Windows" and I suppose MonoDevelop doesn't hurt either (haven't tried it but see my reasoning in my previous post). However, the scope of the Mono project is much broader than merely providing a runtime and an IDE. What remains standing is my criticism that there's no need for the .Net approach on Linux (as it solves primarily Windows problems) and it's not only practically but also fundamentally incapable of providing .Net for Linux.

    It's not up to me to tell anyone what to do on the bazaar but I can't help thinking it's largely a waste of effort.

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    • Originally posted by Caesar Tjalbo View Post
      Nice example, more interesting than 'run your existing server-side C# code on an environment other than Windows'. Unfortunately, one of the more prominent examples, Unity3d, isn't working for Linux (yet) afaik.
      This is not a technical issue but a marketing decision (the company believes there's no money to be made on Linux). Linux support is actually the most-requested feature on the Unity3d wishlist.

      Second Life switched Mono for scripting on all platforms and achieved a not-insignificant speed increase.

      I'm fine with having C# on $platform != "Windows" and I suppose MonoDevelop doesn't hurt either (haven't tried it but see my reasoning in my previous post). However, the scope of the Mono project is much broader than merely providing a runtime and an IDE. What remains standing is my criticism that there's no need for the .Net approach on Linux (as it solves primarily Windows problems) and it's not only practically but also fundamentally incapable of providing .Net for Linux.
      What windows-specific problems does C# solve that don't also exist on Linux?

      It's not up to me to tell anyone what to do on the bazaar but I can't help thinking it's largely a waste of effort.
      With that thinking, what's the point of having Fedora, SuSE, Arch, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mint, Kanotix and another hundred distributions that do the same thing? Isn't that a waste of effort?

      How about KDE, Gnome, XFCE, FluxBox, OpenBox? Waste of effort.

      Or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, HURD, ReactOS or any other open-source kernel. What's the point now that we have Linux? And what's the point of Linux - Minix was doing perfectly fine before!

      Please don't use that argument, it's a slippery slope. Free Software is largely a duplication and waste of effort - and that its beauty! The thousand forks, the hundreds of alternatives to cover anything imaginable is what give it strength and fuel it. There is no "one size fits all" here, there are thousand small things for thousands of different needs.

      Mono covers some of its needs. Waste of effort? Definitely! But some people can find uses for it and that's enough to justify its existence.

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      • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
        What windows-specific problems does C# solve that don't also exist on Linux?
        The paragraph you quoted specifically says that C# on other platforms is fine, and that "the .Net approach" is what solves Windows-specific problems (many of which are essentially under the umbrella of "Win32 is a pain in the ass").

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        • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          This is not a technical issue but a marketing decision (the company believes there's no money to be made on Linux). Linux support is actually the most-requested feature on the Unity3d wishlist.
          Yes. Just saying that the posterchild of Mono-based scripting engines doesn't run on Linux (yet).

          Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          What windows-specific problems does C# solve that don't also exist on Linux?
          None, I said ".Net approach". Programming for Windows has become a lot better and easier in the past 10 years and the reason for that is .Net with its baseclasses and CLR. Some principles may be a useful improvement for other OSs or programming languages, actual implementation of said principles may not.

          Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          With that thinking, what's the point of having <here comes list of distros, WMs and OSs>
          You're free to do what you want on the bazaar. Each example you gave however is at least capable of being feature-complete with regards to their ambition contrary to Mono.

          I didn't say that duplication of effort is a waste per se, i didn't say the open software development method is wrong. I'd have applauded it if the Mono devs had said "It's only going to be a runtime/compiler and oh, we'll throw in an IDE for shits and giggles".

          Mono strives to be more. If the result is useful to anyone: good. But full-featured it won't be, at least not up to the point that it covers the Microsoft implementation. And then I'd have to say that the effort would have been better spent speeding up Python or improving the tooling on Lua/Angelscript, to use your examples.

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          • I'd like some honest answer to this as I stumbled upon something on the internet but I can't find any truth to this. Someome claims that C is a succesor to B and that C# is a B clone. Is this correct?

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            • Originally posted by V!NCENT View Post
              I'd like some honest answer to this as I stumbled upon something on the internet but I can't find any truth to this. Someome claims that C is a succesor to B and that C# is a B clone. Is this correct?
              It's incorrect. C# is a clone of B in the sense that C, C++ and Java are a clone of B: they use similar symbols to denote scope (i.e. { }), function calls (i.e. foo()) and statements (i.e. .

              Other than that, there is almost no similarity: B doesn't have a type system (everything is a word), there's no OOP, inheritance, generics, properties, delegates, events or anything else for that matter.

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              • Originally posted by Caesar Tjalbo View Post
                Mono strives to be more. If the result is useful to anyone: good. But full-featured it won't be, at least not up to the point that it covers the Microsoft implementation.
                If you followed Mono's development you'd see that they are not striving to be a .Net clone. If they did, they'd be trying to implement WPF and they wouldn't be adding their own, incompatible additions (Mono.SIMD for SSE, Mono.Tasklet for microthreading/continuations, a C embedding API, etc.)

                At this point, Mono is actually better suited to my uses (game development) than .Net, even on Windows. Using a mere 4MB I can add the non-patented parts of the CLR to an application, including file IO, XML, math, reflection, code generation, native interop and sandboxing. This is an extremely powerful environment, completely open-source and covered by the patent grant.


                And then I'd have to say that the effort would have been better spent speeding up Python or improving the tooling on Lua/Angelscript, to use your examples.
                This is a common fallacy: why do you think the Mono developers would be interested in working on Python, Lua or Angelscript? Remove Mono from the picture and its developers won't move to Python: they'll move to another project they find interesting.

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                • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
                  What windows-specific problems does C# solve that don't also exist on Linux?
                  As far as I can see the Windows-specific problem that C# solved was people writing portable applications in Java wihch didn't require Windows to run. Linux users generally don't mind people writing portable applications which also run on Windows, whereas Microsoft want everyone running Windows.

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                  • Obviously Mono is not an important part of the Linux software ecosystem but I still maintain that it's better to have something than not having it. If Mono development dies out then that just means one less weapon in the foss arsenal and that's not something to cheer about in my opinion. Looking past the patented parts of .NET I see no reason to fear C#, heck from my admittedly quick glance the Vala syntax seems to be entirely based around C# and it has quickly become an appreciated language amongst many Linux users (Shotwell is a very nice app!).

                    So lets try to look at C# from a technical standpoint rather than as something that has come out of Microsoft. Understandably Linux users are wary of things coming from Redmond given it's long history of FUD/aggression towards Linux, and again I certainly wouldn't depend on any of the patent-encumbered .NET parts but that doesn't mean noone else should be able to make that choice for themselves, and again C# is itself in the clear.

                    As a programmer I've always looked at Linux as the ideal platform choice because pretty much EVERY SINGLE language, toolkit etc is available for it. I see this as one of the great strenghts of Linux and the existance of Mono simply helps reinforce that. Having something available if you should need it is not the same as relying on something.

                    As for the future of Mono, I guess the problem for Novell (and now Attachmate) has been in finding ways to pay for the development. Things like MonoTouch, Mono for Android has been attempts at such but it seems it hasn't been successful enough to warrant the cost of the development team.

                    Hopefully there's a plan B somewhere.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
                      This is a common fallacy: why do you think the Mono developers would be interested in working on Python, Lua or Angelscript? Remove Mono from the picture and its developers won't move to Python: they'll move to another project they find interesting.
                      Thank you for accusing me of this "common fallacy". Thank you too for misrepresenting my words again.

                      What made you assume I "think the Mono developers would be interested in working on Python, Lua or Angelscript"? Frankly, I don't give a flying fuck what they're interested in, I've never made any assumptions as to their interests.

                      Your other points are noted. I wish the Mono-project godspeed with their embrace and extend activities.

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