G
Guest
Alvin Bruney said:
Just being curious: Anyone knows whether MS has any plans to support the
efforts of the "mono" project? I never got the point why MS ported Internet
Explorer to SunOS, but not to Linux. What a big relief it would be if VS was
able to offer cross-compiler abilities!
Of course, I am well aware that MS's biggest business still is the sale of
OSs, but as long as Linux keeps emerging (at least in the server market), I
find it like "the three apes" to refuse any form of contact (not to say
embracement) with the "evil world" of open source based, but long-accepted
standards like Linux, MySQL and the like.
MS may have or may not have the marketing power to persuade interesting
customers of the superiority of their server and database products, but all
those so-called "companies" selling and serving Linux, like RedHat and SuSE
didn't even start developing a real marketing power.
As far as my abilities in augury reach out into the future, I see a
side-by-side. Something like 40% MS servers, 30% Linux/BSD/OpenSource servers
and 30% from other vendors like Sun, IBM, HP. Something like 80% Windows
clients/desktops, 10% Linux (KDE/Gnome) desktops, 10% other stuff like Apple,
SGI, Sun. So, there will be a demand for interoperability, thus a market for
developer's tools offering interfaces and tools to develop enterprise
applications in even more heterogeneous environments than they are already
today.
VS, even the older versions, but notably VS.NET, is, imho, an outstanding,
if not unique, toolbox that no other OS has to offer to developers. In fact,
developers working with Sun's stuff are far behind in terms of tools they
have at hand, and in fact, for Linux developers, there is not much more than
Emacs and GCC.
If MS were to support the "mono" project, maybe even in helping it creating
a .NET-compliant System.Windows.Forms namespace, I am very convinced that VS
eventually would become one of the -- if not THE -- development tools of
choice for *NIX systems as like as it is for Windows.
After writing so much, just a last one regarding the OP's
question/statement. As far as I am concerned, without a fully-compatible
"mono", Java has one single advantage: cross-platform abilities. Comparing
the current Java with the upcoming .NET 2, I don't see any essential things
in Java that the average desktop- until enterprise developer needs so much
that he/she has to switch to Java. In contrary, Java lacks performance, Java
lacks stability, Java lacks standards, Java lacks a lot of features. More
important, the Java "framework" is far away from comparing with the deep and
broad structure .NET is already supporting and even farther away from
comparing with .NET 2. Java is a (ugly, imho) programming language, .NET is a
philosophy, plugging it's tentacles deeper and deeper into the OS and
offering developers a more-than-just-elegant way to achieve their goals.
As someone said (someone did, isn't it?), Java is a nice toy to develop
applets every browser is able to display and deal with, while on the other
hand most home users don't have the .NET framework installed. But with
Longhorn this is also going to change.
Nobody has to pray to Bill, but men should accept that MS has "adult"
concepts and objective visions what's going to happen to computer usage. And
as far as I can remember, MS's schedules never were reached in time, but they
were reached, and their concepts more than often changed the whole IT
industry.