Will Mono Become the Preferred Platform for Linux Development? (O'ReillyNet)
Posted Mar 12, 2004 18:41 UTC (Fri) by
josh_stern (guest, #4868)
Parent article:
Will Mono Become the Preferred Platform for Linux Development? (O'ReillyNet)
My experiences with Java can be summarized as follows:
Pro: Can download one or two big packages that have a bunch of
well documented libraries that work nicely together with threads,
runtime class loading, and exceptions more or less across
platforms. The fast compilation speed is also a plus.
The virtual sandbox for applications is greate for apps where
sanbox code runs fast enough to be usable.
Cons: Important chunks of the package can't be directly
distributed to others; overall amount of high quality
libs is much less than for C/C++; footprint is large and
speed is slow compared to C/C++ for *some* types of applications;
the virtual OS layer that is provided is lowest common denominator
and can't be extended within Java itself; the GUI libraries
(both AWT and Swing) are poorly designed and can't be replaced
within Java itself.
IMO, app development within both C/C++ and Java or C# could be
improved if some of the open source tools for cross platform
C/C++ that are out there now-e.g. glib, ACE, Mozilla/NPSR,
gtk, Swig, Boost, etc. could be integrated in a best of
breed framework that would provide a stable virtual OS
layer and libs with at least the functionality of Java 1.2.
This would give C/C++ developers many of the benefits of
Java and would enable developers of new virtual machine
platforms like Mono a large base of functionality
that wouldn't need to be reinvented and re-coded.
Furthermore, if the virtual platform contained binding
to the most complete and extensive virtual OS facilities
provided by some of these libraries, it would be much easier
for developers in those languages to build the extensions
they need within the language itself.
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