[TriLUG] C# and .NET

[Andrew C. Oliver]

>
> There is an absolutely _huge_ amount of software running
> businesses today written in COBOL.  By some estimates, there
> is _still_ more software running today in COBOL than most
> other languages, combined!  What is it being (slowly) replaced
> with?  Java.  And probably C#, when it's ready.  C and C++ are
> not options there.  It's not that they couldn't do the
> job...but the productivity gains of a simplified (and especially
> garbage-collected) language are simply more important than
> processing-efficiency in these labor-intensive conversions.


Well said.  But the point that should be made is that it will primarily 
be C# on
Windows, when its ready.  And C# on Linux will likely be somewhat 
splintered.
Please take a look at: http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html for the details, 
and understand
both what will be shipped this year, and what won't.  Understand the 
already designed
splinter via ECMA reference implemnetation and MS SDK.  

C# has a few features that will give it edge over Java.  I do not think 
it will greatly exceed
the Java runtime in its performance (though it may possibly on windows). 
 Based on the
information provided by Ximian, I feel pretty dern rock solid certain 
that it will never achieve
the level of compatibility the original poster hopes to achieve. 
 Microsoft is taking forever to
get the Windows SDK for C# finished and they're mostly layering it on 
their existing APIs.
If this were easy then it wouldn't have taken until recently for 
CrossOver office to finally get
a version of wine far along to just be able to run MS Office.

If you're looking for something bleeding edge and alpha to possibly 
offer the performance of C++/C and yet language
features of Java/C# look at "D" -- http://www.digitalmars.com/d -- Trust 
me...you'll like it.  It doesn't offer
the VM panacea for multiplatform development, but it does offer the 
potential for writing nice cross-platform
libraries.  

-Andy

>
> Cheers!
> Chris
>
> *********************************
> Chris Merrill
> cmerrill at nc.rr.com
> *********************************
>
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