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A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

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Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#92
post #31

This is going to be horribly negative so a bit of context first: I'm a professional C# programmer. I love C#, I think it's a great language. But there's a huge downside: C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). There's nothing here that suggests that this would have anything other than the same restrictions. So, assuming the language develops int…

> But there's a huge downside: C# only works on Windows.

Not true. And, even if it were, how is that in any way a downside from Microsoft's point of view? As a Linux user myself, the main reason why I switched from Windows is that all the exciting advances in programming languages are happening in * nix-land, mainly Haskell and Rust. If there were some super-duper-awesome language for which Windows were the first-class platform, I would seriously consider switching back. I do not give a single damn about software freedom, technical excellence trumps all else.

> So, assuming the language develops into everything that's promised, you're left with something on which you can't do mobile, can't do big data, probably won't work very well for scientific computing.

Or Microsoft could be aspiring to make Windows a viable platform for all of those applications. Just because today Windows sucks for them, it does not mean it has to suck forever.

> So the best you can hope for, basically, is a better C#. But not good enough to take on Java.

Java's sole achievement is being consistently (as in "in the same way") crappy on all platforms. I would much rather be locked into a single platform for which there is an awesome language.

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#94
post #31

This is going to be horribly negative so a bit of context first: I'm a professional C# programmer. I love C#, I think it's a great language. But there's a huge downside: C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). There's nothing here that suggests that this would have anything other than the same restrictions. So, assuming the language develops int…

C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). Speaking of Mono, does anyone know of a good resource for C#/.NET devs to learn how to port their Windows apps to Linux/Mac relatively easily? I did a writeup a month ago about my first impressions of Mono: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6744622 In short, there don't seem to be very many "Here's how…

If python is the language that you are gonna use, you would try Kivy cross-platform framework to make GUI for desktop and mobile.

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#95
It's interesting that there's renewed interest in a modern systems programming language. However, I feel as though the world doesn't need another ALGOL-like language. C# is very good at what it does, but managed code will always execute at a slight penalty vs native code. Nonetheless this will be an interesting experiment into a modern "safe" systems language.

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#96
post #37
post #31

This is going to be horribly negative so a bit of context first: I'm a professional C# programmer. I love C#, I think it's a great language. But there's a huge downside: C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). There's nothing here that suggests that this would have anything other than the same restrictions. So, assuming the language develops int…

> yeah, I know about Mono What's wrong with Mono? I worked with C# only briefly and I really liked it (as opposed to Java.. but maybe I just had better tools). If I'd need something a bit faster than python, C# would probably be my choice. That's assuming it's portable to other platforms...

I am big C++ fan, but i understand that the C++ language is going into nowhere. It's like "all in one" solution that is too big, too hard to learn and use nowadays. I've been using C++ for more than 10 years, still many things are shocking me ))

I am sure C# is the "Next Main Desktop App Dev. Language". I really wish MS would OPEN-SOURCE it one day. You can read article in my blog about that here (really short): http://anthonyakentiev.github.io/blog/2013/12/08/what-if-see...

I wish C# will be used freely everywhere - on Apple, on Android, on Linux... Really - Mono/Xamarin does not have a full .NET/CLR/C#/frameworks support.

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#97
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# developer here, also love the language. I completely agree and I only hope that this new thing will be just as good as C# but fully cross-platform. It would be great. >mobile Xamarin is pretty solid, although it costs a lot.

You looked at Kotlin? As a C# developer I'm loving the language and it is x-platform. And that's despite my assumed bias, because I work at JetBrains.

Kotlin seems nice but when's Kotlin going to be "for real"?

What I mean by that is, when will it go 1.0? When will we see a major project from Jetbrains implemented in it?

Kotlin has been around for a couple of years now and Jetbrains still won't answer these questions as far as I can see[1].

[1] - http://devnet.jetbrains.com/message/5490337?tstart=0

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#98
post #31

This is going to be horribly negative so a bit of context first: I'm a professional C# programmer. I love C#, I think it's a great language. But there's a huge downside: C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). There's nothing here that suggests that this would have anything other than the same restrictions. So, assuming the language develops int…

I don't see why Microsoft would create something that would work on other systems....they want people to use Windows.

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# only works on Windows. This vastly reduces the number of things you can do with it (yeah, I know about Mono). Speaking of Mono, does anyone know of a good resource for C#/.NET devs to learn how to port their Windows apps to Linux/Mac relatively easily? I did a writeup a month ago about my first impressions of Mono: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6744622 In short, there don't seem to be very many "Here's how…

I have been building GUI applications with Java and Swing for some time. I am willing to go on-the-record and state that Swing provides a reliable and thorough cross-platform GUI toolkit. Once you put the work in, you really can build an application that looks native-ish and does the same thing on Windows, Linux/GTK and Mac OSX. Unfortunately the learning curve is quite steep, many things are more complicated then th…

Swing is also fully rendered on the GPU.

Seesaw is the only reason why I'm still bothering with Swing too, it actually makes the thing fun to use!

Re: A glimpse into a new programming language under development at Microsoft

#100
The homepage of Joe Duffy says "I’ve been granted 45 patents, with another 33 pending" (see his homepage under /about via google cache since the page is down due to load from HN). Bragging about patents doesn't exactly make me like the guy. Has he been living under a rock, why would he write that on his about page?

Anyway, he says explicitly that he cannot reveal any details at this point; i.e. Microsoft has filed patents related to this "new langage" and can't talk about it until they are approved. He also claims to have been working on his "new language" for 5 years already; I wonder what those 33 patents he says he got pending are? Or maybe he patented 33 things related to something he hasn't been working on for the last 5 years? Not likely. Microsoft will get more and more desperate as they continue to be marginalized in terms of market cap, market share and developer mindshare. They have a long track record of simply being dicks (i.e. just look at how they charge royalty for every android phone, and how they created the Rock Star patent troll company etc).

It would be better for everyone if Microsoft stayed out of the "perf + productivity" language niche.

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