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Update to the .NET language strategy

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#91

Post by bmitc »

cglong wrote: post #78
bmitc wrote: post #41

> F# explores new language possibilities and the community provides a rich experience across platforms. There are several interesting observations to be had here. For one, F# already explored (past tense) new language features and has long been essentially feature complete. It gets little features here and there, which are generally quality of life type of things (like anonymous records, for example). Another interpr…

> F# already does not support several C# features, for good reason, maintaining only what it needs for interoperability purposes. Could you enumerate some of these? My team is still using .NET Framework, so we're missing out on the new C# goodness.

One is that C# has partial classes but F# does not. This comes up for all the XAML tooling that C# supports but F# doesn't. Also, F# only has null for use in certain situations only for interoperability. There are others that I've seen but don't know off the top of my head. I think they are usually OOP related and at the edges. I don't much know them because I don't really know C#.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#92

Post by HyperSane »

mythz wrote: post #63
jameshart wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity3D is probably one of the most widely used cross platform native app development platforms, and it’s taking c# .net code to Linux, macOS, android, iOS and browsers via wasm.

This doesn't speak to the cross-platform .NET Core runtime as Unity3D is built with C++ and still uses their modified fork of Mono to run C# code whilst their WASM uses their IL2CPP tool to convert .NET byte code to C++ before using Emscripten to convert to WASM.

So C# -> bytecode -> C++ -> Javascript? Wow.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#93

Post by [deleted] »

bmitc wrote: post #84
justin66 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish people would embrace it like Elixir has been embraced. F# is a lot more popular than Elixir.

I'm not sure about that given the amount of jobs I have had and found in Elixir, which also has a more vibrant ecosystem. I have strong confidence that I could get another Elixir job. I would be surprised if I could even locate an F# job.

[deleted]

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#94

Post by pjmlp »

bmitc wrote: post #41

> F# explores new language possibilities and the community provides a rich experience across platforms. There are several interesting observations to be had here. For one, F# already explored (past tense) new language features and has long been essentially feature complete. It gets little features here and there, which are generally quality of life type of things (like anonymous records, for example). Another interpr…

And if you go for the comments, the confirmation that C++/CLI is also managed by WinDev, not DevDiv (which owns .NET).

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#95

Post by pjmlp »

zengid wrote: post #38

Hot take but I wish they’d start a new lang in the spirit of what’s happening in swift/Kotlin instead of evolving C#. I use it everyday. I love the new pattern matching, it simplifies a lot of gnarly reflective type checks and feels good. Records are nice too. I see discriminant unions are coming soon. But they’re painting themselves into the corner in terms of syntax and overcoming OOP defaults. A fresh start would…

What spirit?

Kotlin only matters due to Google's shenanigans on Android with Android Java, and pushing Kotlin as its replacement.

It is J++ vs C# all over again.

They could just as well buy JetBrains.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#96

Post by pjmlp »

kcb wrote: post #14
BenGosub wrote: post #11

How well are F# and C# supported on the Linux platform?

First class. I would wager that most new .NET projects are primarily targetting Linux for deployment.

Not really, plenty of VS tooling doesn't exist on VS4Mac nor VSCode.

GUI frameworks don't consider Linux a deployment target, not even MAUI with its Xamarin heritage.

Due to its Windows original focus, lots of libraries still rely on Win32, COM and other Windows specific issues. This also inhibits most big name CMSs, which still rely on .NET Framework, e.g. Sitecore, SharePoint, Dynamics,....

Targeting Linux containers is usually only done by us if writing greefield microservices without many dependencies outside the standard library.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#97

Post by steve1977 »

marssaxman wrote: post #71
shawnz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the actual design work happened in the C# world, and our job was just to tag along and mimic whatever they had come up with. What's the unique guiding philosophy or use case of VB that would justify developing bleeding edge new language features in VB first? Maybe I am just being overly critical here but I just don't see how the use cases which VB accommodates would benefit from getting new features before C# g…

I always saw Basic as the language for non-professionals who wanted to create their own software: hobbyists, amateurs, small business owners, people who have an idea and want to automate whatever it is they're doing, but aren't trying to write code for a living. C#, by contrast, is a proper mainstream language for professional programmers.

I've definitely seen VB6 applications powering for example bank counter systems. This has been a while ago though.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#98

Post by pjmlp »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #50
unclad5968 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP gave a cynical, but fairly accurate summary. If F# is worked on by MS research, they certainly didn't communicate that in the strategy they just published. C# >We will keep evolving C# to meet the changing needs of developers and remain a state-of-the-art programming language. We will innovate eagerly and broadly in collaboration with the teams responsible for .NET libraries, developer tools, and workload…

Yeah, it is strange that they did not mention that part of F# directly, only obliquely in saying that they maintain compilers and toolchains and runtimes with extensive community support, or something similar, perhaps on the linked page. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... There's an example of a Microsoft Research paper on F#.

Have you checked the date? I think nowadays only Don Syme is employed by Microsoft research.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#99

Post by pjmlp »

madeofpalk wrote: post #40
Kwpolska wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rider is even cooler, with all the magic from ReSharper, and the much saner IntelliJ user interface.

Microsoft should be embarrsed at how good Rider is.

Why? There are still plenty of VS features for Windows development workloads that it lacks.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#100

Post by pjmlp »

rqtwteye wrote: post #26
clouddrover wrote: post #2

Sounds like Visual Basic will be a second-class citizen going forward.

VB.NET should never have happened. It has only superficial similarity with VB6. It was sold as upgrade path from VB6 but that never worked.

I am more radical, .NET should never have happened, rather the original Ext-VOS idea with COM instead of trying to build on top of Java ideas.

VB6 was AOT compiled and used COM as its component model, C# should have been similar but for C++ folks, basically what .NET Native came to be.

However they really botched UWP execution, when it could have been the proper .NET reboot back to Ext-VOS roots.

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