• (cs) in reply to johnl

    Mono will be good enough soon, I hope.  But I'd say that the threat of litigation against the project keeps my group from using more than lack of technical merit.  Who wants to develop against a platform when one of the merits of using that platform [being cross-platform] might be litigated out of existance?

    In the context of an end-user application, I agree, in a general manner .  What I was saying was that C++ and assembler aren't dead just yet. In the toolkit for the end user, you're needing a screwdriver.

  • (cs) in reply to johnl
    johnl:

    >Personally, I disagree with the Linux bit to a certain extent. I dunno, really, not having looked at Mono that >much (other than keeping a general track on the project). My boss thinks it's doomed to failure, but I >disagree. I think MS have a head start on them, for sure, but they are (slowly) catching up.


    Can't go back and edit the other one, and I'm posting right after you.
    I don't think that it would fail due to technical merit.  I do believe it to be possible that enough core functionality to be killed off to make it useless as a cross-platform alternative, and to ensure that no one in the corporate world would use it.  Microsoft 'says' that the C# core patent portfolio is open to anyone, but there are numerous people who think that this is just for expediency to say it's cross platform and can compete with Java, and that if Mono ever actually became popular for businesses they would try to kill it as quickly as possible.

    I'd love to have QT#'s bindings working well right now, I'd probably move to Mono for the UI for applications I work on during off-hours.  But from a business standpoint, my unix applications are still safer using QT/C++.
  • (cs) in reply to TheDauthi
    TheDauthi:
    Mono will be good enough soon, I hope.  But I'd say that the threat of litigation against the project keeps my group from using more than lack of technical merit.  Who wants to develop against a platform when one of the merits of using that platform [being cross-platform] might be litigated out of existance?


    I don't think that MS will ligitate agains Mono; anyway, for cross-plattform development, there are more mature options, like Java or C++&QT.
  • Moi (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ

    To be honest...
    I've never considered M$ coding langauges to be that useful, or, well, good. All they seem to be is an easy to use alternative to what i would consider to be proper languages (PHP, Java, C, C++, Perl). Yes, they often appear to be easier to code in... (VB, hahaha), but in making code more readable (ie, more like english) or easier to use, you always inherently sacrifice performance. C might require you to do things that other languages handle automagically (ie buffer overflows), but that fact that there isn't an extra int at the start of the string to say how long it is means your compiled application may end up several K smaller than if such ints were present. And yeah... if you're a serious coder (and not just a M$ monkey) then this matters.

    I'm not saying i'm right and everyone else is wrong, it just surprises me that so many people believe M$ coding "standards" are actually superior and that other languages should somehow measure up to them.

  • (cs) in reply to Moi
    Anonymous:
    I've never considered M$ coding langauges to be that useful, or, well, good. All they seem to be is an easy to use alternative to what i would consider to be proper languages (PHP, Java, C, C++, Perl). Yes, they often appear to be easier to code in... (VB, hahaha), but in making code more readable (ie, more like english) or easier to use, you always inherently sacrifice performance. C might require you to do things that other languages handle automagically (ie buffer overflows), but that fact that there _isn't_ an extra int at the start of the string to say how long it is means your compiled application may end up several K smaller than if such ints were present. And yeah... if you're a serious coder (and not just a M$ monkey) then this matters.


    Sorry, but that's rubbish. As would be the opposite statement (but less so). A good, professional programmer should certainly KNOW about this, and then decide whether it matters depending on the system he's working on. On an extremely resource-limited platform like a mobile phone or an embedded system, a few K might matter, but on a PC or server with gigabytes of RAM, it's not worth wasting a thought about.

    It's actually the mark of an amateurish wannabe that he'll memorize context-dependent half-truths, especially performance details like "Strings with a length field waste space" or "exceptions are slow", and think these are absolute rules, and following all of them will make him a good programmer and give him the right to look down on everyone who "violates" these rules.

    Nowadays, programmer time is usually by far the most costly resource, and to a company paying for custom software develoment by the hour, one week of extra development time due to a more "performant" language is usually more expensive than buying a few extra server.

    Finally, I would REALLY like to see you explain how exactly Java is a "proper language" and C# isn't, considering that it's basically a carbon copy of Java with minor cosmetical changes.

  • (cs) in reply to masklinn
    masklinn:
    md2perpe:
    The arrays in PHP function as arrays, lists and structs at the same time

    The PHP array is an abuse of hashmap structures period. Python's list, on the other hand, really is an array and a list (and a queue, and a stack). And not a hashmap.

    What do you mean by "abuse"? In what way are they abuses?

    By the way, I didn't say that PHP arrays are lists. I said that they function as such.
  • dreifus (unregistered) in reply to TheDauthi

    "In theory, you can have one without the other..."

    I'd say you can't even in theory.
    Quite popular foreach works on top IEnumerable's only that is language keyword cannot be used without support from the framework itself.

  • dreifus (unregistered) in reply to TheDauthi
    TheDauthi:

    Yes, I'm aware of Mono.  I like it quite a bit, but having played with it, I could not in good faith roll it out to production, as an earlier poster said.



    I have picked up some library writen in C# on the web and tried to compile it with csc. To my surprise I've got quite a few errors. When I have looked at the source of errors I decided that it is probably a little early to consider Mono as a serious platform : the guy who wrote library haven't bothered himself with implementing IList interface completely in one of library's classes. Either Mono's compiler let him go away with it or Mono's implementation of IList is different from MSFT's one.
    I'm pretty sure the guy was able to compile code successfully before posting it to the web.

  • (cs) in reply to algorythm

    As someone who quite likes PHP, I feel I must make the point that the majority of PHP "professionals" do abuse it disgusting. In particular, few PHP programmers seem to have any idea what SQL Injection is (in fairness, classic ASP programmers tend to be worse; most of them THINK they know what SQL injection is but believe it can only occur on INSERTs, or similar)

  • php programmer (unregistered)

    Anyone who has enough time to really get into a "my language and piss farther than your language" debate probably isn't a professional anyway. 

    The only thing that Alex says that is at all inflamatory (but not very) is the quip about Variable Variables.  Its perflectly valid to say you don't select PHP wtfs often, because most of the WTFs are people who were never even paid to write that code, or had it used in anything more complex than a mail form.  The comment about Variable Variables is a bit of a "cheap shot" because all languages have (lostly legacy) material that can be equally be fodder.

    My clients won't drop me for using PHP due to PHP bashers here, nor will anyone loose their ASP work - and I think its safe to say we'd all rather be off writing good code than trying to respond on forums to the fanatical minorities in any of the language groups, and most of us including Alex are not in that minority, so my advice is its best just to not be sucked in.

  • (cs) in reply to php programmer

    I don't think that MS will ligitate agains Mono; anyway, for cross-plattform development, there are more mature options, like Java or C++.

    I agree with ammoq on this one, to a certain extent.  I think C# is good and it's getting better.  It's not as mature as Java, but maturity comes with time.

    I don't think MS will litigate against Mono because Mono (and Portable.NET) is vital to .NET's success as a cross-platform framework, which in turn is important if it's meant to go up against Java.

  • (cs) in reply to johnl
    johnl:
    I don't think MS will litigate against Mono because Mono (and Portable.NET) is vital to .NET's success as a cross-platform framework, which in turn is important if it's meant to go up against Java.


    I really don't think MS wants it to succeed as a cross-platform framework. They want it to succeed, but if at all possible they  also want to force people to continue buying Windows licenses (and Office licenses, and Outlook licenses, etc.). So it's not unrealistic at all to suspect that MS might keep quiet about Mono exactly as long as it's needed to make people depend on .NET, and eradicate it the moment they believe .NET is prevalent enough to survive as a Windows-only product, forcing people to buy Windows licenses to save their investment in .NET software.

  • (cs) in reply to brazzy

    No doubt they'd like to force people to buy MS products, just like Sun would like to force people to buy Sun products, but I think both MS and Sun are more realistic than this.  They know that people use whatever system fits their needs, be it Linux, Unix, BeOS, Windows or Mac(OS).  MS can take advantage of the cross-platform market or leave it alone, but I don't think they're stupid enough to think they can make it go away.

  • (cs) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:

    I really don't think MS wants it to succeed as a cross-platform framework. They want it to succeed, but if at all possible they  also want to force people to continue buying Windows licenses (and Office licenses, and Outlook licenses, etc.). So it's not unrealistic at all to suspect that MS might keep quiet about Mono exactly as long as it's needed to make people depend on .NET, and eradicate it the moment they believe .NET is prevalent enough to survive as a Windows-only product, forcing people to buy Windows licenses to save their investment in .NET software.


    .NET will go in two ways: Some people will use it to make state-of-the-art Windows apps, which will probably not run well (or at all) in mono or .net. P/Invoke, anyone? I expect them to run comparably well like Win32 apps run in Wine.
    Other people will use .net to make cross-plattform apps; they know the restrictions and pitfalls, they test against Mono too, and will eventually succeed. MS could kill that off (by ligitating agains mono), but for what? The first group will make sure there is still need for Windows; the second group would switch (back) to Java.
  • SHaKie (unregistered) in reply to Chad
    Anonymous:
    Experience is more important than the tool.
    A great coder can solve a problem regardless of the language.


    Never a truer word spoken
  • PHP wuvs to wuv you (unregistered) in reply to Alan W. Balkany
    Anonymous:
    Can someone recommend a book that covers how to use PHP effectively?  (Not just syntax.)


    Try this:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672325616/104-8433389-5981503?v=glance&n=283155
  • Dave Edelhart (unregistered)

    Using PHP effectively -- use the Zend Framework.

    I find it interesting that you think PHP makes it "Too easy" to write bad code, yet you host a site rife with examples of bad code in Java ... ?

    I was never aware that writing bad code was ever "Hard" ... IMHO Java just makes writing bad code take longer.

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