[Mono-list] evangelizing mono

[Gustavo Ramos]

Hello Jeff,

> However, they're gravitating to C++, at least for their server piece, which
> may be a good choice for the lead developer(s) who I think already knows
> C++, but may be a sub-optimal choice for the project in general. I fear that
> they may be in "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"
> mode.

I feel that if your most enthusiastic developers doesn't feel
comfortable with a language, there's just little possibilities to keep
the enthusiasm high, no matter how good is your proposal. Keep this in
mind.

>  - Do you have good evangelism tactics for Linux developers who evaluate
> Mono and find it somehow "un-Unix-like"?

Well... if you are conquering a beautiful girl, and she smiles... that
doesn't mean that everybody has a beautiful one. They could be married
with an ugly, fat girl... with a dog... or with a window. Okay,
seriously: A program for ebay services will be for all, including those
married with a window frame, they can be buyers, too. Of course, there
are other multiplatform options, but none of them has all toghether:
easyness, strong-typing OOP, very very rich class framework, language
interoperability, remoting, gui, web services, strong web server
support, etc. E.g. You could have two linux gurus working on mono, and a
bunch of developers on windows. The gurus are not a problem, because
they know how to solve all things (in any language), but developers on
other platforms won't have to care about cross-platform issues, and
minor developers will get productive soon (smooth learning curve). And
this is not an evangelism tactic, it's a good reason ;-)

>  - Is there a technical answer to the "mono my.exe" command-line objection?

If someone gets irritated with the ".exe" extension, just crop it and
run "mono myprogram". I don't think this is a technical issue, just an
anti-ms-ism. Well, but there's a good reason to leave the .exe extension
there: That executable is multiplatform, and no changes or recompilation
are needed to run it on windows. For ebay apps, surely the majority of
the client deployment will be for windows clients. Anyways, if you
develop it with C/C++/Pascal/Whatever, you'll have to deal with .exe's,
unless you use javascript or any other scripting language.

>  - Is there an elegant solution for distributing the Mono framework onto
> client machines today?

Yes, they are currently used: NSIS installer (win), RPM's... For unixes
you shouldn't have any trouble, as everybody using it know how to
install things. It's more difficult to troubleshoot a binary installer
(like kylix) than any other well known thing.

Getting back to the first point: If you only have developers for linux
and they feel good just with unix-like things, that's your best bet. You
could later port the working thing to mono and show them asking for
opinion. They'll get convinced when cross-platform problems arise.

Regards,

Gustavo
"Things fall down by its own weight"