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A comment on Mono 2.8 has been released. Parent comment

Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by icey on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @09:35PM (#1766530)
Here is the "official" compatibility chart:

http://www.mono-project.com/Compatibility

The chart is based on 2.6, the stuff that was added today falls under the "Current Mono Trunk" section.

I'm not sure if the DLR (dynamic language runtime) is fully functional on Mono yet. The DLR is what's used to make IronPython and IronRuby run on the .Net stack. It's embedded into Silverlight, which allows developers to run Python and Ruby in the browser (assuming their users have the Silverlight plugin). Mono has Moonlight, but again, I'm not sure if the DLR is in there.

I personally see C# as an evolutionary next step from Java. That being said, languages like Scala, Clojure, JRuby (which I guess is technically a language implementation) let you get the benefits of Java without all the sucky language parts.

C# is a solid server-side language. I'm not terribly impressed with it for the web, although MVC makes it much better than it used to be (blah, webforms). There's an interesting project that was posted here recently called "Manos de Mono" that offers some variety in the web space [1]

It's also turned out to be a pretty decent mobile development language. You can develop iPhone and Android apps using Mono [2][3], as well as cross-platform games [4][5].

You can use Mono in client-side applications, but I'm not sure how well it works or everything that's involved with using it that way.

One of the nice things about Mono is that it lets you write C# on Unix and Unix-like platforms. For those of us that use C# during the day, it's liberating to be able to use the same language on our Macs at home, or deployed on Linux servers next to our other software.

[1] http://github.com/jacksonh/manos

[2] http://monotouch.net/

[3] http://monodroid.net/

[4] http://code.google.com/p/monoxna/

[5] http://unity3d.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by fauigerzigerk on Thursday October 07, 2010 @01:47AM (#1766964)
C# is an evolutionary step from Java, but it gets a bigger one with every version. I would say it has diverged further from Java than Scala. I think it's become a really interesting language. Somewhat surprisingly. It seems the people around Anders Hejlsberg are somewhat of an aberration within Microsoft considering how slow other groups move.

Anyway, the most interesting feature in .NET is that its memory consumption is about half that of Java on an average application. Sometimes more. Memory constraints are what bothers me most with the other platforms I use, particularly in a hosted environment where doubling memory often means doubling overall cost.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by gaius on Thursday October 07, 2010 @08:49AM (#1767623)
I don't find it surprising at all - when you look at some of the people MS have working for them, not only Anders Hejlsberg but Simon Peyton-Jones, Don Syme and others. They've got some world-class talent in language design and nearly unlimited resources. ML in the guise of F# in the hands of every Visual Studio user, any of whom can use it without incurring the ire of the PHB 'cos "it's Microsoft". These are great days, my friend!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by urza on Thursday October 07, 2010 @11:59AM (#1768273)
I would say it has diverged further from Java than Scala.

Could you please elaborate why do you think so? (I am just interested to hear some toughts from someone who has experience with all three languages - Java, C# and Scala. I know Java and C#, but I did not yet have time to learn Scala).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by fauigerzigerk on Saturday October 09, 2010 @09:12AM (#1774961)
I'm not doing any actual work with Scala either. I read Programming in Scala a while back and played with it some but not much more. What I had in mind when I said C# diverges more was Linq.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by nileshk on Thursday October 07, 2010 @07:58AM (#1767525)
the most interesting feature in .NET is that its memory consumption is about half that of Java on an average application

Does that also apply to Mono? If so, are Microsoft's .Net and Mono equals as far as low memory consumption, or does one of them have an edge?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by fauigerzigerk on Thursday October 07, 2010 @10:30AM (#1767933)
It does apply to Mono as well. I haven't done a detailed comparison, just some ad hoc tests. The reason why memory consumption is so much lower is not an implementation detail. It's because .NET knows structured value types (struct in C#) and hence uses way way fewer pointers than all JVM based languages.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by cageface on Thursday October 07, 2010 @05:18AM (#1767283)
C# as a language and .NET as a platform both seem pretty powerful but there's no way in hell I'd build anything non-trivial on a Microsoft stack. I don't have anything new to add to the argument but I'm just not comfortable with the degree of faith people like Miguel seem willing to put in MS and some of his more recent defenses of them in particular just sound like denial

I'll take the JVM with all its warts and Scala or Clojure over C# no matter how nice it is.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by storm on Thursday October 07, 2010 @08:43AM (#1767609)
One nice thing about the HN crowd is that it is for the most part pragmatic, able to quite refreshingly discuss C# as a language without immediately descending into these tired talking points casting Microsoft as patent-wielding bogeyman, etc. This is even more peculiar now that Oracle owns Java and is actually engaging in the kind of behavior that we were supposed to be desperately scared of Microsoft engaging in with .NET any day now.

If you're reflexively injecting off-the-shelf 'be afraid to use it' notes into a conversation where C# is mentioned, and applying a trite pop-psych analysis to Miguel de Icaza to boot, you may want to take a few steps back and ask who is really bringing faith and dogma to the table here. Is there anyone in this crowd who hasn't heard your stated opinion approximately 1,000,000 times, and who wouldn't carefully weigh such considerations before making any production commitments?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by cageface on Thursday October 07, 2010 @10:46AM (#1767991)
I agree that the Oracle acquisition and lawsuit is troubling. I disagree with everything else you've said. Java has an established, vibrant open-source ecosystem. C# does not. Java was the brainchild of a bunch of sincere tech geeks. C# was another cynical MS business ploy. Sun and now Oracle are heavily invested in Linux and other open-source projects. Microsoft has many times described open-source and Linux in particular as its enemies and indulged in a lot of sabre rattling and hints of patent infringements and has fought tooth & nail to stop adoption of Linux and open formats and standards at every possible turn:

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/199501735/microsoft-... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2023127.stm http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/microsoft-file...

Would I be happier if Java were in better hands? Yes. Does that make Mono/C# a reasonable alternative? No chance. If you're tired of hearing these arguments blame Microsoft for making them intrinsic to any discussion of their platform. Technological choices sometimes have ethical implications.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by migueldeicaza on Thursday October 07, 2010 @01:35AM (#1766943)
The DLR is fully functional in Mono by virtue of Microsoft having open sourced the entire DLR under the MS-PL and Apache2 licenses, so this release contains the same DLR that you get in .NET 4.0
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Mono 2.8 has been released by peregrine on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @09:56PM (#1766567)
I agree with your statements about webforms(double blah), I've been working on a fairly signifigant MVC2 project at work and its far better then doing the same in webforms. Microsoft is truly trying to get back into the web game and make it 'cool' to be a web dev on the M$ stack.

That said the community is still lacking. Their are plenty of motivated passionate people but they very often feel like their are just doing it to get a book deal or speaking gigs and not because they care.

Oh well.

[ Parent | on HN ]