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Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

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171–180 of 937 posts

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#171

It will be interesting to see how this will work in practice. C# will port over just fine. But the .Net libraries? System.Windows has little to nothing in it, and right now using things like System.IO.* on Linux and Mac is just asking for trouble. What are they going to do, hack in System.IO.* Linux support after the fact? Or just add Linux.IO.* which is even more of a hack. In either case you're going to get very me…

As far as I understood, they are really slimming down the core .NET CLR (runtime). Most of current BCL .NET libraries will be exposed as separate nuget packages, which makes it really convenient.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll never switch back to MS for what they've done in the past I'm not sure what they've done to receive such hatred. They are just a technology company and are trying to sell the product.

> I'm not sure what they've done to receive such hatred. Hatred? I simply decide not to buy into a certain company's products and services because I recall some misdeeds from the past and that's equal to hatred? As for what they have done, I thought Microsofts history was chronicled enough that it doesn't need repetition, especially not on a website for 'hackers'. But if you need pointers, you can go visit groklaw.ne…

I think some people just have moved on. Heck, a lot of people here were not in tech when Microsoft was doing bad stuff.

Stacker: 20 years ago. IE Antitrust: 10 years ago. SCO: 10 years ago.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#175

If you would have shown me this headline 15 years ago I would have thought it was an onion article. Who would have thought they would have come this far?

15 years is a long time. The culture changes because new people coming in have different ideas and upbringing. People that any company recruits have different ideas about OS than they did 20 years ago. For instance, one of the movers here is Scott Guthrie, who joined MS in 1997: 17 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Guthrie And let's not forget thsi from Hanselman: "I've been here pushing open source and t…

The culture changes because new people coming in have different ideas and upbringing.

Market forces and realities impact Microsoft's decisions far more than culture does. The reality of the Microsoft stack right now is that very few people are choosing it as a greenfield option, and those already invested in it are looking at alternatives.

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about a new project I was initiating, choosing Java as the platform. Understand that I've been a Microsoft stack developer for many years, but a variety of inertia, platform support, ease of getting setup with the development tools, and trust in the platform reasons made Java the better choice.

But this announcement changes the equation to some degree, as have Microsoft's various other opening up directives. Microsoft no longer sets the technology agenda, so choices like this are simply a reaction to that new reality. That isn't being cynical, and the changes are very welcome, but Microsoft didn't just punt the old timers and now they see the light.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#176

aka "We're actually facing competition from open source now, so we're going to listen to what people have been saying for years. Love us?"

You know but this is actually very good. This in the end will make it better for the developers. And I loved that the licensing is MIT instead of Mono's LGPL for the runtime.

This will allow Jetbrains to create a good Intelli(j|n) IDE for C#. :D

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#177

It's funny how Nadella has moved the needle more for developers in 9 months than Ballmer did in the last decade or so, and all that without running around like a madman too. Pretty good. I'll never switch back to MS for what they've done in the past but it is nice to see them try hard to become a nicer player in the software eco-system. Google and Apple need some other party to keep them sharp, it might as well be MS…

>I'll never switch back to MS for what they've done in the past I'm not sure what they've done to receive such hatred. They are just a technology company and are trying to sell the product.

> They are just a technology company and are trying to sell the product.

If you reword things enough, nothing makes sense. For example:

"I don't see why Stalin receives such hatred. He was just a politician, and tried to stay in power so he could keep following his vision."

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#178

What happens to Xamarin business model now?

It improves it. We now get all these bug fixes for all of our products across Android, Mac, iOS, PlayStation, Xbox and every other embedded system we support. Some details: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Nov-12.html

This is your fault. Thank you.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#179
Good move, but (too) late.

The move is designed to attract iOS and Android Devs to .NET.

But let's see:

As an iOS developer, I've invested years in learning Objective-C and Cocoa, UIKit, etc. Now I'm starting with Swift. I'm sure a lot of iOS devs feel this way. Besides, if I can't use it from OSX, then I'm out.

Why should I forget everything and learn C#/.NET ? If I want a write-once-run-everywhere thing, then I could go for one of the miriad Javascript or HTML5 cross-platform frameworks or C++ with Qt, JUCE or the likes.

Same thought pattern applies for Android/Java - why would a seasoned Android/Java developer want to learn a whole new framework and programming language ?

Is C#/.NET so much better than Java/Android or ObjC/Swift that it mandates switching to it ?

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#180
post #126
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and check out System.Console for some horrors in the mono runtime.

System.Console isn't something that most apps rely on. It's handy for printing something out in a tiny one-file test app, but generally not relied upon for bigger apps.

Are you saying core .NET libraries are worthless?

Because in that case what's the point? Why not just use Java.

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