[Mono-devel-list] Some Mono Developer Love...

[Mike Stanley]

Hey mono - you guys rule (period)

I've been lurking on this list pretty much since mono compiled itself
(with various email addresses at different times - caused by some
job/life changes).  I occasionally speak up but not enough for anyone to
recognize my name... I want to change that :-)  I've loved this effort
from the start and am more than impressed at the team's continued
progress.  

With that let me give fair warning that in the past - for every Open
Source effort I've ever contributed to - or sought to contribute to - I
usually leave the gates strong.  Once I start to contribute, *BAM*, just
like that, work sucks up all my time and I vanish.  I swear I've been
cursed.  My real curse though is my curiosity (and I've been lucky
enough to play R&D roles in every company I've worked for).  Too much
cool stuff going on and not enough lifetimes.  I am an addict.  Mono,
Gnome, GTK, Python, and Bonobo are quickly becoming my new drugs.

Here's what I bring to the table:
    - 6+ years J2EE developer - senior dev (often project lead), and
lead architect.

    - 1 1/2 years .NET developer

    - currently working with Cauldron Solutions, a NY based company,
focused on the development of interactive television commerce, workflow,
business intelligence solutions.  My work here ranges from large Java
enterprise software to embedded C

    - previously I worked for the MITRE Corporation with their US Air
Force Center's Internet Technologies group.  Developed internal business
applications and customer prototyping.  My group was a "rubber meets the
road" style R&D.  Their I worked with a wide range of technologies
including distributed app development, web services, voice recognition,
text-to-speech/auditory services, mobile development, desktop
applications, profile and identity management, .....

(WARNING - heavy opinions follow) - .NET is way behind J2EE in the areas
of enterprise development and community maturity (breadth/depth maturity
not mental maturity :-).  However, .NET has a superior technical
foundation - which in the long run could make it the defacto standard
(if Java doesn't smartenopen up).  To me some of the major advantages of
.NET are:

    - MSIL and the CLR is just way cooler than java bytecode and the
jvm.  Not just because of the language independence thing (which is rad
- iron python will kick the crap out of jython), but more importantly
because of the depth of dynamic code generation capabilities built right
into the design.  Dynamic Code generation has become huge recently in
Java.  All the newer trends (including AOP) rely on some outside byte
code generation library (JavaAssist, BCEL, cglib, just to name a few...
).  These are heavily used by JBoss, Hibernate, AspectWerks, Spring,
Cactus, and other popular libs.  Not only Code generation, but MSIL also
enables huge benefits to reflection and code/assembly meta data

    - GAC and assembly version!! YEAH.  Classloaders in Java blow.  Ask
anyone who's worked on distributed app servers (for an example, take
look at JBoss - the unified classloader sucks and it is a huge
improvement over what it used to be).  Built in version support and
Strong naming is a beautiful thing.  Ask anyone trying to manage
multiple projects and third party dependencies (or better yet, talk to
some Maven folks, or take a look for yourself at their approach
http://www.ibiblio.org/maven).  Why Java never enforced the manifest or
try to improve it, I will never know.  Did I mention side by side
execution of multiple versions rules.

    - Code Access Security (although overly complicated and 99% of apps
will run fully trusted), this could put an end to some of the windows
plagues of today.  (but does it make the user any smarter?)  CAS is Java
Policy on steroids.

    - JNI sucks.  enough said.

    - Swing Sucks.  SWT is cool(er), Win Forms are weak.  Avalon I know
nothing about (other than the name is not original
http://avalon.apache.org) How does it compare to XUL? from the million
mile height they look similar.  GTK # is the best.  Keep up the great
work!  and without a doubt, .NET client side development trumps Java

    - Remoting rocks.  Although they may have made it too easy. 
Distributed application development should never be brainless.

Don't get me wrong though.  For the last 6+ years my heart and soul have
been in enterprise development with Java.  There are many things about
.NET I don't like (but a lot of them are either just nit picks, or just
simply because its still in its early stages).  

I've ranted long enough.  I'm not even sure if this email makes sense
anymore.  I just wanted to say thanks for the hard work, and keep it
up!  mono is definitely one of the most important efforts going on right
now  (don't listen to the slashdot/M$ hater crowd that just doesn't see
the big pictures yet - when I was in high school I hated a band when it
was too popular).

Talk to you soon..
- Mike Stanley
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