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More than an open-source curiosity (News.com)
News.com features
an interview with Miguel de Icaza.
Q: "Now that Mono 1.0 is done, what can you do that you couldn’t do before?" A: "Oh, Unix is a world of pain for developers. Now, basically what we got is very modern IDEs (integrated development environments) for developing software on other platforms." (Log in to post comments)
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 15, 2004 17:41 UTC (Thu) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link] If I didn't know any better I would say that this interview was with aMicrosoft public relations representative rather than Miguel. Wierd. Am I alone in this perception?
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 15, 2004 17:53 UTC (Thu) by DaveK (subscriber, #2531) [Link] It is the kind of comment I have come to expect from someone who if I recallcorrectly was prevented from taking up a job at M$ by the U.S. Dept. of immigration, and appears to still be trying to get it back.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 17:50 UTC (Fri) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] IIRC, he was prevented from taking a job at Cobalt not Microsoft. The reason was that he didn't have a college degree and because of that he couldn't obtain a work visa.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 19:31 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] If I recall correctly, he did work at MS for a period, as an intern.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 15, 2004 18:08 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I completely agree with you. Microsoft likes to say that open-source developers are just 'chasing their tail-lights'. Well, it looks like Miguel is fulfilling that accusation rather nicely. I just hope he's good at hitting the brakes, 'cause tailgating can be really dangerous (not to mention really annoying.)
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 0:17 UTC (Fri) by penguinroar (guest, #14460) [Link] You are not alone at all in that perception. I feel like im listening to Microsoft marketing department and not to some open source project leader. The thing with mono is that Microsoft controls it totally. Right now they WANT people to believe it is cross platform. Mono is doing them a big favour because they would have to do it themselves otherwise.I just cant wrap my head around what Miquel finds just so intriguing about mono. To me its the same old new name and a vicius company with manic depression behind it. If mono gets successful its doomed so i cant really see the point here. Wouldnt it had been better if we had done our own thing instead och tailing Microsoft? Surely we can do much better than them on keeping the stuff cross platform? It really feels like Miquel have a hidden agenda or is working for Microsoft. I know he doesnt but thats what it feels like in my stomach.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:27 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > Wouldnt it had been better if we had done our own thing instead och tailing Microsoft? Surely we can do much better than them on keeping the stuff cross platform?I think you're touching on some really important stuff here. The way I see it, Mono is to .NET what Cygwin is to Unix. A second fiddle. While Cygwin is really nice, one would say "a Unix away from Unix", a true Unix it ain't. Same with Mono. I reckon free software community shouldn't be focusing on things like that - we're bound to be trailing, never leading. They just want to disperse our creative energy on as many project as they can, while reaping the rewards. Just remember the Java episode. Microsoft was absolutely terrified (back in 199[678] or something) that it's going to become the next universal platform, making their own platform irrelevant. Look at all the shenanigans around the whole thing. They were prepared to go to any length to put it in the corner while they come up with their own thing, .NET. Sun had their own agenda, of course - they wanted to sell more hardware by making the underlying platform irrelevant. On the other hand, techologies that are true open source always tend to be really cross platform: Perl, PHP, Python, GCC etc. That's the kind of stuff we should be looking up to, not .NET. Not only is Mono in a catch-up position all the time (and he admits to it too), but it risks the possibility of having the door closed on it at the first opportunity. The patent minefield prepared by Microsoft is also growing, making the whole thing even more dangerous. I just don't see the point.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 11:01 UTC (Fri) by LesPaul (guest, #18420) [Link] > On the other hand, techologies that are true open source always tend to> be really cross platform: Perl, PHP, Python, GCC etc. That's the kind > of stuff we should be looking up to, not .NET. Yes! Perfectly right! I can't help but think about this .net and mono madness. Why does open source community need this? I am very happy with cross platform solutions such as PyGTK, PyQt. Python has a HUGE library, from image processing to application servers, various bindings for GUI libraries. Here, the point is not Python -insert your favorite open source technology here- but we have the necessary tools, why go with something like .net? Will .net programmers run their code on linux? With a mixture of managed and unmanaged code? With unbroken windows forms compatibility? Arrggh!
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 21, 2004 23:50 UTC (Wed) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] Mono is different from Perl, PHP and Python in that it is is a strictly-typed language. If you don't like strictly-typed languages, that's fine. But many people do.So for people who like Perl/PHP/Python/lisp/scheme/smalltalk/etc, go for it. But there are currently only two strictly-typed languages with garbage collection, exception-handling, and good cross-platform portability that I am aware of: Java and C#. And Java doesn't currently integrate nearly as well with Linux/Posix/GTK/etc as Mono does. Please forget about the minor feature that Mono allows binaries built on Windows to run on Linux. It's just an almost accidental side-effect of providing an implementation of the ECMA-standard CLR and ECMA-standard c# language. Windows forms is a crappy way to develop GUI apps on Linux, and I would expect most people will use GTK# instead. And also, I wish people would stop saying that Mono is bad because "Microsoft invented it", or "Microsoft use it". Who cares who was paying the inventor's salary, when it is an ECMA standard? And who cares whether Microsoft use it or not, when c# is a good programming language? Microsoft **cannot take away** c# and the CLR from the world. They can possibly stop stuff compiled on Windows from working with mono/wine. But who the hell cares about that? Apps written for Mono will still work fine with Mono. Xerox invented windowed GUIs, and Apple made them popular. Does that mean that linux shouldn't use them? Nope - they are a good idea, and the concept is not patented, so of course we should adopt the idea. So where's the difference with MS-dot-net vs Mono? I do agree that Miguel's "Unix is a pain" comment was ill-judged. Hey, he isn't the only loud-mouth in the software development world :-). Does every emacs user agree with RMS??
statically typed Posted Jul 22, 2004 6:59 UTC (Thu) by shapr (subscriber, #9077) [Link] There are quite a few other statically typed languages with garbage collection, exception handling, and good cross-platform portability.I'm fond of Haskell, and I know some other people use OCaml to get the same benefits. There are a wealth of programming possibilities beyond C, PHP, and Python. I encourage people to learn lots of different programming languages and paradigms, then you get to find out what works for you.
statically typed Posted Jul 22, 2004 9:38 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Hmm... And how much more libraries there are for Haskell and/or OCaml in comparision to Mono/C# ?
OCaml Posted Jul 23, 2004 6:10 UTC (Fri) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] Since you can call any Perl or Python library directly from OCaml, I'd say there are far morelibraries available to you. It's also a much more pleasant language to use than either Java or C# (since those two are (Oh, and portability across Linux - Mac OS X - Windows is very simple and pleasant in OCaml). http://www.merjis.com/developers/ocaml_tutorial Rich.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 15, 2004 19:44 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Oh, Unix is a world of pain for developers. Not for this developer. I love developing under UNIX. For me, it's as close to Nirvana as a development environment can get. Now, basically what we got is very modern IDEs (integrated development environments) for developing software on other platforms. Now that for me is a world of pain. Why on earth would I want a stupid IDE that has an editor that isn't as good as emacs or vi, a debugger that isn't as good as gdb and a build system that isn't as good as make (and probably stores its "project" files in some weird binary format, or worse yet, XML)? I applaud Miguel for starting the GNOME project. I don't use GNOME or KDE, but I can see that there's an audience for those projects. But his continual slagging of UNIX is tiresome and juvenile, and he really should grow up. Oh, and: We did a study at Ximian when we were trying to find customers for Mono. We found that people said that it was 25 percent more efficient to build in ASP.Net, because they have to do all this academic crap (with J2EE). Miguel is starting to sound like Gartner or DiDio, with these mythical "studies". Who was asked? I think it's 99.99999% more efficient to program with chisel and clay tablets than with Visual Basic --- so what? Are we supposed to believe everything that people in a self-serving study say?
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 15, 2004 20:25 UTC (Thu) by jae (guest, #2369) [Link] XML is worse than weird binary? In what world do you live in?I 100% agree with the rest of what you say (even the subject ;-)
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 15, 2004 21:05 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] XML is worse than weird binary? In what world do you live in? When it comes to a Makefile, or some other file that is supposed to be edited and understood by a person, XML is as bad as binary. XML is great for exchanging data between programs, but pretty poor as a language for humans to use directly.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 15, 2004 21:26 UTC (Thu) by Hawke (subscriber, #6978) [Link] Perhaps xml is not very good for humans to use directly...butseriously...have you tried to read a binary file directly?
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:42 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] It really depends on your XML application. I can edit XHTML or DocBook XML in just about anything (with a preference for Emacs's XML mode), and enjoy it. And while I don't think I could write an AbiWord document from scratch, the fact it's not a binary format has let me use grep, head, etc. on them, which I couldn't do with binaries. There's a lot of value in text, even if it's not very editable.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 19, 2004 13:26 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] From my point of view, XML is great to store structured data (even if you have to write the file yourself), but it is useless as a programming language. Crappy as hell. If you want to store structured data, by all means use XML; if you have to describe how a task is done, please stay away. Now, what does a makefile resemble more: data or code?Eons ago I read a guy complaining in a list: if I had a cent for every programming language in XML I've had to suffer, I'd be a millionaire. Well, it is obvious we never learn.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 15, 2004 23:04 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] Text is better than binary. And readable text is better than tons ofnext HTML-like elements which are automatically generated and easy to mess up. Of course the biggest problem is that the application that reads in the XML can't print out nice error messages because we were never meant to hand-craft input files. I'll take a Makefile any day.
OT: XML sucks [was: Miguel is an idiot] Posted Jul 16, 2004 2:11 UTC (Fri) by uriel (guest, #20754) [Link] Two of my favorite quotes on XML:The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well. -- Phil Wadler, POPL 2003 Some part of me desperately wants to believe that XML-RPC is some kind of elaborate joke, like a cross between Discordianism and IP Over Avian Carriers -- Ex-Cyber on #plan9
OT: XML sucks [was: Miguel is an idiot] Posted Jul 16, 2004 12:50 UTC (Fri) by LintuxCx (subscriber, #14448) [Link] Don't forget this one:and XML is simply lisp done wrong. -- Alan Cox
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:39 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] When your only options are Mono and J2EE, the results are not surprising. That doesn't make them any less pointless, though; all they really say is that people shouldn't be using Java, and nothing about Mono.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 2:59 UTC (Fri) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] I've reached a point where I'm not sure what to look into anymore.I really, really like the Tcl approach. It's beautifully simple, and yet very powerful and extensible, but there is no marketing and not much momentum. Even Python, which is the language du jour in the open source world doesn't have the marketing to take on Java and Microsoft. Corporations are flocking to Java and .NET like flies to shit, so it's looking like knowing something about them is going to be an important skill. I hate java though, I hate how wordy it is, I hate the mentality that java exists not to help hackers, but to limit the damage that monkeys churning out code can do if they screw something up. And I don't like the fact that it's proprietary - I'm no extremist, but I'm pretty wary of basing a large chunk of my infrastructure on non-free software. The whole mess leaves me sort of saddened and confused about where I want to spend my time.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 17:43 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Corporations are loudly talking about Java and .NET. Whether or not those corporations and the software will last, and to what extent they are actually coding in Java and .NET rather than just paying lip service, is another matter.Python, Ruby, and the like are very common in contracted projects, and in-house software. Java and .NET seem to be popular lately for large corporations producing software to sell to other large corporations, but that's only a small part of the total software written.
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 2:32 UTC (Fri) by walles (subscriber, #954) [Link] Why on earth would I want a stupid IDE that has an editor that isn't as good as emacs or vi, a debugger that isn't as good as gdb and a build system that isn't as good as make [...]?Your point seems to be that if their IDE sucks you won't want to use it. That opinion is probably shared by the rest of humanity as well, so why write a comment about it?
Miguel is an idiot Posted Jul 16, 2004 7:01 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I wrote the comment because Miguel is a fairly loud spokesperson for his cause, and is mistakenly believed by some to be a spokesperson for the Linux or Open Source communities. If Miguel is allowed to rant, then so am I. :-)
UNIX is an IDE Posted Jul 16, 2004 8:09 UTC (Fri) by ctg (subscriber, #3459) [Link] I pretty much agree with you.UNIX is an integrated development environment - going right back to the days of the "Programmer's Workbench" concept (and probably before). However, it does lend itself to more systems type programming - once you get into the world of modern GUIs then things are more complex - I suspect Miguel thinks only of GUI development. But as GUIs aren't part of UNIX - I don't really see how this relates to UNIX. If he means anything at all he means "some of the GUI toolkits that you get can be quite hard for me to program". Low level X programming can certainly be quite tricky.
Miguel is _not_ an idiot Posted Jul 19, 2004 10:49 UTC (Mon) by dash2 (guest, #11869) [Link] If you're used to vi, emacs, make, etc. I am sure they are wonderful. But the learning curve is agonizing. I have been using vi on and off for years and only recently am I becoming as productive as I would be in a normal GUI editor. I have just started looking at make, automake et al, and it just seems to live in this bizarre cryptic world of its own, where it is necessary to generate more LOC than is contained in my actual project, just to domv app.py /usr/local/bin etc. I look forward to using nice, modern tools, and I would infinitely rather read XML than a makefile. And in general, I think Miguel's comments of Unix are rather thoughtful. No, for 99% of humans, the command line is not good enough. No, pipes and signals are not a good modern basis for IPC. No, "small tools that do one thing well" is not the only possible design philosophy. No, processes are not always superior to threads.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:40 UTC (Fri) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link] I really didn't expect this kind of comments on LWN guys.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 4:20 UTC (Fri) by jeroen (subscriber, #12372) [Link] You can also turn it around. Because these comments are on LWN, there might actually be something true about what those comments say.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 5:31 UTC (Fri) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] I must say I was surprised too. By reading these comments one would think that we believe that:
I've never done any .NET code, but I had the opportunity to sit through a course that Microsoft was kind enough to pay for, since I then worked for a partner of theirs. The fact is .NET is better than Java in every way. And especially ASP.NET is way better than JSP/servlets. Sure when I really tried, I managed to make an ASP.NET app that would break when I turned off JavaScript, but for most tasks it actually does The Right Thing, with valid html and all. Now, it's true that also PHP and I think even C++ is a better tool than JSP for making webpages, but still. Why are we continuosly crying about Sun should make Java Open Source, but now when we have an Open Source .NET, we see it as a problem?
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 7:06 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Nonsense!
There's no "NIH" syndrome. Miguel just irritates the cr*p out of me when he feels he has to put down UNIX to promote his agenda. If he hates UNIX so much, he should use Windows.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 7:52 UTC (Fri) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link] I'd add that the lack of a command line is what finally drove me from using a Mac (System 7) to getting a PC and installing Linux. Granted, GUIs have gotten more sophisticated since then, but having fought with Gnome recently I really appreciate being able to do things on the command line or through simple text editors. The most comfortable and productive environment for me is still Fvwm2 with very few bells and whistles.What would be really great is an _ab initio_ Open Source virtual machine to which gcc could cross-compile, as could the compilers for the various scripting languages.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 13:26 UTC (Fri) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] If he hates UNIX so much, he should use Windows. He's not in this game because he likes UNIX more than Windows. What he cares about is free software as opposed to proprietary software. I don't know, never having used it, but Windows may well have some useful technology. In which case I have no problem with people that are enthusiastic about that technology creating free implementations of it. Wasn't the GNU project started to clone a proprietary operating system? --Bruce Fields
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 9:32 UTC (Sat) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] Ok. So your argument is that Unix (or 'the unix way') is perfect as it is and anyone trying to improve on it should be stoned to death?I agree that the particular quote in the article is unfortunate, but still. If someone then counters that with "mono is useless, bad and dangerous", it's not a level of conversation we are used to on lwn. I at least would like to ask that people who want to comment on Mono/.NET have used it themselves or at least seen a demo of it.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 11:53 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] If he thinks that the Unix way is not perfect (I don't think it is either), he should counter with real arguments, not this "pain" crap. Unix isn't perfect, but it's also the least painful development environment in many people's opinions, and Windows is pretty much up there at the top. And his argument should consist of a lot more than "my IDE completes function names for me" which is all that I get out of most people who claim to prefer MS development.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 20:26 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] The UNIX environment is perfect for me. It's not perfect for everyone, and I have no problems with people who don't like it.However, Miguel is trying to pitch his products to UNIX and Linux users, so it's in his best interest not to antagonize them. After all, Windows users won't give a hoot about Mono; they'll just use .NET.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 22, 2004 8:35 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] No, AFAIU his argument was "the Unix way is not the greatest pain in the world". This does not imply one cannot improve it.If I would want to use the Windows way and .NET, I don't need Unix and Mono - I just go with Visual Studio. For this kind of environment, it's very nice and quite stable. And it has a much better integration with other MS products than Mono. (I have a universal MSDN subscription...) So, for what shall I take Mono? For my work on Unix? With such an interview, the Mono spokesman tells me that it's for those who think that "working on Unix is a PIA". OK, then it's for somebody else than me. Joachim
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 8:37 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] (1) No one said anything bad about interoperability(2) No one said anything about any "one and only Open Source project..." (3) No one said anything close to your comment about malloc (4) No one said anything derogatory about GUI development No, we haven't had our head in the sand for the past 10 years. We are not 'command-line weenies' or whatever caricature you want to paint. What we did say is that (a) we would rather not use something that's based solely on a patented product from a known predatory monolopy, and (b) we don't like having our community insulted (indirectly, through comments about our platform) by one of the people that purports to be a 'leading member' of the community, whatever that means, who currently is sounding like he's brown-nosing for a position in Redmond. The bottom line is, I (and, it seems, 'we' also) don't trust Microsoft in any way, shape or form, and want to minimize my/our exposure to the attacks that are obviously coming in the near future with regard to patents, etc. The icing on the cake (at least for me) is that Miguel's comments just seem an awful lot like a knife in the back. I like Gnome (even Gnome 2.6) and I wish I could keep it from going Mono, due to Mono's Trojan Horse nature (in the fullest sense of the word). (sigh...)
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 9:40 UTC (Sat) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] "The bottom line is, I (and, it seems, 'we' also) don't trust Microsoft in any way"Ok. I think this is actually the only opinion here that doesn't fall directly in the "utterly childish" category. It's not an opinion I agree with at all, but it's at least a valid opinion. I expect that the rational beings we are, you guys oppose the WINE project and Crossover Office and whatever Transgaming was called nowadays with the same rigor? I didn't see any comments like this after Transgamings press release the other week...
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 11:50 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Then you weren't looking very hard, when I called them (Transgaming) on just about every word in their description of Cedega. http://lwn.net/Articles/90587/
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 21:29 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Automatic memory management is a bad thing, having people write malloc() statements is the only right wayI think YOU dragged that up. I've read all the comments up to yours, and this is the first mention I've seen of malloc(). Perhaps you're arguing with the person inside your head?
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 9:25 UTC (Sat) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] Admitted. It's not an opinion from here, but I've often heard it in other places. It takes the form of Miguel saying: "C# is a better way of writing an average user-level GUI app compared to C" to which one responds: "No it's not. No it's not."By the way, almost forgot the most important one:
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 17, 2004 20:28 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Straw man. You may not notice, but what really ticks me off is Miguel's attitude. While I personally think Mono is a waste of time and effort, I don't care if developers choose to pursue it. I do get annoyed when they feel compelled to put down other systems, and act like they are developers' saviors.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 18, 2004 16:04 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > We shouldn't waste resources on multiple projects, instead we should focus all our energy on the one and only Open Source project which is GCC, Perl, Tcl, Ruby, Python, Php, Gnome, KDE etc.Since you touched here on something I mentioned, let me clarify. Big corporations, like Microsoft, Sun, IBM etc. always have their own agenda. Always. Microsoft wants to sell more of their software, Sun wants to sell more of their hardware (and maybe even software), IBM as well. That's a given and we should not be naive and believe that they are doing something because they believe it's "the right thing to do". They do things because they want to make a profit. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, we just need to be aware of it. So, in the light of what I was just talking about, do we believe that Microsoft is into .NET because they want to give everyone a standardised platform or are they in it because they want to compete with what Sun offered first with Java and therefore capture that market too? I think it's a no-brainer, the answer is the latter. Don't get me wrong, Sun is not much different with their Java stuff (they wanted to take the share away from MS), especially of lately, with their spec licences written in a way that treat any code written to them as Sun's property. Now, with that in mind, do we really want to go down the path of their own technology (and some of it patented, no less), geared towards helping them capture markets they didn't traditionally own? Why would we want to do that? Our goal should be to provide people with our own platform. A platform that first and foremost works well within itself (i.e. interoperability within should be goal number one), a platform that provides GUI tools, IDEs, WYSIWYG etc. for itself first. If we can achieve that, we will grab large part of the "market" anyhow - we need neither .NET nor Java for that. Granted, interoperating with Java and .NET is important, but this should be our secondary goal, once we have achieved full integration and functionality for our own platform. But where is that platform? Do we really need to go to big corporations to get the specs for something we should design ourselves? I think not, at least not completely. We do not want to be directly controlled by a single corporation in that manner, especially not one that is known for doing some really dubious stuff when it comes to competition. We should be doing our own thing, there is no doubt in my mind about that. And the projects I've mentioned have started on that path - they are using the specs that are either well established standard or they have created those standards from scratch. Work geared towards achieving these goals would have been better spent, IMHO. Developing Mono is playing catch up with Microsoft. With Novell controlling Ximian, do we even need to ask what the motives behind it now really are?
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 5:32 UTC (Fri) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link] I must say I was surprised too. By reading these comments one would think that we believe that:
I've never done any .NET code, but I had the opportunity to sit through a course that Microsoft was kind enough to pay for, since I then worked for a partner of theirs. The fact is .NET is better than Java in every way. And especially ASP.NET is way better than JSP/servlets. Sure when I really tried, I managed to make an ASP.NET app that would break when I turned off JavaScript, but for most tasks it actually does The Right Thing, with valid html and all. Now, it's true that also PHP and I think even C++ is a better tool than JSP for making webpages, but still. Why are we continuosly crying about Sun should make Java Open Source, but now when we have an Open Source .NET, we see it as a problem?
Miguel just doesn't get Unix Posted Jul 16, 2004 1:52 UTC (Fri) by sean.hunter (subscriber, #7920) [Link] Unix is, of course, only a world of pain for developers who don't understand unix and have no unix skills. For someone with those skills and that understanding its a tremendously rich and productive environment.I work in a large institution and we develop on Windows, Linux and Solaris and plenty of people (myself included) find themselves far more productive developing on Linux.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 8:40 UTC (Fri) by mkc_673 (guest, #22244) [Link] I get the feeling that most of the people commenting above haven't used Visual Studio .NET for a major project. It's quite good and there's nothing I've seem on linux that is as smooth. It's a different paradigm, I guess.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 9:10 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I don't think you got the point of my/our comments. The C# / .NET approach and tools may be very nice, a good idea, and easy to use. I DON'T CARE. This is not my point of contention. My point is, I will not use something that Microsoft controls. Period. And the fact that one of the supposed 'open source luminaries' is pushing people toward that is very annoying and dangerous (IMO).
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 12:38 UTC (Fri) by mkc_673 (guest, #22244) [Link] That's fair, I guess I was writing mostly about:"Why on earth would I want a stupid IDE that has an editor that isn't as good as emacs or vi, a debugger that isn't as good as gdb and a build system that isn't as good as make (and probably stores its "project" files in some weird binary format, or worse yet, XML)?" Clearly written by someone who hasn't used the ide too much. I don't think miguel is pushing people to use windows, I think he sees good technology coming from microsoft and thinks we can take advantage of it. Just playing a little devil's advocate ;)
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 13:22 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Clearly written by someone who hasn't used the ide too much. I freely admit that I haven't used an IDE in years. I've tried them now and then, but I always end up hating them. IDE's are completely counter to the UNIX philosophy: Write small tools that do one thing, and one thing well. (OK, so emacs isn't a small tool, and it does lots of things, but I have yet to see an editor that even comes close to its power. And my vim-using office mates have the same opinion about vim.) The problem with IDEs is that you no longer have choice over which tools you want to use. You have to use whatever the IDE offers, and that's it. To me, that's simply unacceptable, and a source of endless frustration.
IDEs are not evil Posted Jul 16, 2004 14:16 UTC (Fri) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link] I use vim constantly. However, in the past few years, I've learned that IDEs do have their place. They're much more productive for certain kinds of things than vim. But they don't replace vim. I use BOTH. Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses.For example, I very much enjoy using Visual SlickEdit. It's cross-platform, has forward and reverse tagging (ala CSCOPE, but better), etc. It supports regular expressions, lets me redefine keys, etc. It also lets me edit HUGE files much more gracefully than vim. VIM will NEVER replace SlickEdit in ease of use. But I still use vim all of the time. Why? Vim is FREE, ubiquitous, has syntax highlighting for every language known to man (nearly), is more lightweight, and is better for text processing and manipulation than SlickEdit. Vim keystrokes flow out of my fingers. Have you ever used IntelliJ or Eclipse to do Java development? They make it so much easier to develop new code than using vim. They automatically complete method names, automatically add import statements, automatically show incorrect syntax. And they have OUTSTANDING refactoring support. VIM doesn't come close to offering those features. And yet I still use vim for the quick and easy edits.
IDEs don't lock you in Posted Jul 16, 2004 14:34 UTC (Fri) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link] > The problem with IDEs is that you no longer have> choice over which tools you want to use. You have > to use whatever the IDE offers, and that's it. I disagree with this. Eclipse, IntelliJ, SlickEdit and yes, even MSDev have interfaces to allow people to write plugins. There's real power in some of those plugins, especially for Eclipse. And if the IDE doesn't do the job you want, nothing prevents you from using another tool to do the job such as sed, perl, vim, emacs, etc.
More than an open-source curiosity (News.com) Posted Jul 16, 2004 17:35 UTC (Fri) by juanjux (guest, #11652) [Link] See, I use an IDE which let me use (K)Vim as editor, gdb as the debuggerand Make (or QMake or autotools, it gives me the choice) as build system. It also integrates CVS or Subversion as control version systems. What it currently lacks compared with Visual Studio is a good GUI designer well integrated with the rest of the IDE (Borland GUI designer is better IMHO) but there is work on the way to fix that (in a short time). The IDE is KDevelop, it follows 100% the "Unix way" (which is not about CLI Vs GUI) and is as fancier as Visual Studio. Miguel's problem is not GUI/not GUI is his constant bashing of "the Unix way" which he clearly doesn't understand. As an previous comment said, it is not "Unix is better than Windows" or "Windows is better than Unix": Some _people_ is better developing in Unix and some people is better developing in Windows. That's ok. What's not ok is for a people that likes to show themselves as a "linux poster boy" like Miguel to do this constant Unix "way" bashing. See Miguel, if you don't feel confortable with Unix like I do (and a lot others who push this thing called free software on the level that it is today, where you can see IBM arguing with Sun about who is more "open") just switch! I'm sure that will make great headlines on MSN. [Please excuse my poor eng"R"ish, I'm not a native speaker and I'm half drunk :)]
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