[Sussex] .NET and Linux - a contrarian view

[The ol' tealeg]

Mark wrote:
-----------
> Just to update, here's a list of the languages that now have some
> support for .NET:
<snip>
> A good start... And hopefully a demonstration that .NET is wider than
> just MS.


Yes, it's nice, and technically good (or at least the structure of the
CLR is), and the business sense behind this is just as good - if you
want people to move to a completely new development platform you've got
to entice them in - by providing a structure that allows third parties
to develop support for syntax in the style of many languages (note there
are compromises in all to support .NET - the most fundemental being the
stuff .NET forces upon C++ developers) they can present it as a natural
progression from older platforms.

All this is well and good but ultimately if you swallow the .NET pill
you get all the disadvantages of Java (plus a whole load more) without
it's greatest selling point - instant portability. 

I would never naively argue that .NET is a 100% bad thing, it isn't, it
has applications for which it is a very good choice, but it is only one
of a range of options and Microsoft are presenting as the _only_ route
forward for non-trivial development on their platforms, and if you
swallow that then you are in trouble.  

It's easy to get conned into believing that what Microsoft are doing
with .NET is somehow revolutionary - the CLR is probably the most
innovative thing Microsoft have come up with in 20 years - but in
reality most of it is built up around ideas that have been in the
community (and particularly around the W3C for 5 years or so).  UNIX and
LINUX has toolsets for dealing with these things that are every bit as
good as .NET - where we fall down is on marketing and presentation. 
Microsoft pump money into awareness, they unify documentation and
present tools with strong educational support, short learning curves
(often at the expense of power for experienced users) and general
prettyness (dotting "I"'s and crossing "T"'s).

-- 
-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk 
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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