[Mono-docs-list] Selling Mono

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 22:21 -0400, Vladimir Giszpenc wrote:
> Numbers sell.  All the benchmarks and performance comparisons are
> several years old.  Today, Mono uses generics with value types, the
> compiler and garbage collector have improved.  Someone should be able
> to come up with a test that puts mono in a good light.  Java may still
> win so Sun might even accept a challenge.  Testing the Microsoft stuff
> is not so important.  Someone should sell Mono with numbers.  It would
> help developers sell their decision to use it to people that don't
> care about indexers and properties.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org

What I always find to be interesting is that while Mono is frequently a
little slower than the various Java flavors, it usually requires less
memory, rather useful for embedded environments...

> Maybe ask an independent third party, or ask someone who has published
> numbers to redo their tests.  You might suggest they use a 64 bit
> architecture (I have no idea if this is faster).

The above Debian site regularly reruns their tests.

> I like the elegance of C#, but there is no reason why it cannot be
> compared on speed, memory and required footprint.  The third is so we
> can move into the phone market.  From what I have read, Mono is very
> fat.

It's not so much that Mono itself is fat.  It's that the class libraries
are extensive.  This can be ameliorated by shrinking the class libraries
by removing types and methods, which is what the Assembly Linker
permits, and what the Silverlight support will use (since it also uses a
smaller class library).

 - Jon