[Mono-list] Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in realbusiness?

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:11:26 -0400

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To assert that VIM is good enough is exactly why "Mono" (the overall
concept) is not competitive as a *business* development platform yet.  Is it
suitable for some people and tasks? Definitely.  It's also suitable for
people who want to contribute their time to improving it, who don't want to
pay for or don't need a more full featured development environment, or who
enjoy tweaking for educational purposes.  But for business development, sort
of by definition, it's not there.

I've been programming for 15 years, on both Unix'en and MSFT platforms at
various times, and I know there are pluses and minuses to both; I'm not a
MSFT blind follower.  But there is no minus to having a usable debugger, or
auto statement completion, or an integrated help system.  They speed up
development time, full stop.  That doesn't mean I need a class browser or
some form building widget, although again many businesses will view that as
part of being "competitive."  As importantly, there IS an inherent
disadvantage to having to spend a huge amount of time recreating or
improving all these things.  Someone has to do it, no question, and those
people are rightfully revered and appreciated in open source efforts.  But
for most business applications, the owner of the business is not going to
see value in the person who was supposed to be writing the WidgetManager app
working on a new debugger for a programming language.  Their time is more
expensive than Windows + VS.Net + a new car.

So again, I love Mono, and I look for places where I can be helpful by
lending stuff I know that maybe other people might have a harder time
finding out, or where I'm particularly suited or interested in a particular
feature.  But in the end, as a guy in a small startup company, I can't spend
the huge amount of time (and therefore money) required to build a debugger
or get Mono fully working on OS X, even though I wish I could, and so I
wait.

And unless the original poster is in a position to do this, I would still
submit that the answer to his question, right now, is "no, Mono is not
competitive with MSFT in real business yet."

Heck, part of the brilliance of Mono is that it doesn't HAVE to be
competitive in all aspects yet.  It embraces and extends MSFT.Net.  You want
to use VS?  Sure, have a ball with all the widgets and doo-hingies.  Then
run it on MacOSX or Linux using the same binary.  Finally, somebody realized
the way to take on MSFT is to beat them at their own game.

-----Original Message-----
From: mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com
[mailto:mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Shawn Vose
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 1:48 PM
To: mono-list mailing list
Subject: Re: [Mono-list] Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in
realbusiness?

Amen! To that. I love vim. I use it for all my coding needs; however, m$ 
people are going to have a hard time figuring out how to save their code.

:w

is not as intuitive as a few mouse clicks

;-)

Jonathan Stowe wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-09-29 at 15:14, Max Metral wrote:
>  
>
>>I'd have to say Mono is not ready to compete yet, but only to complement.
>>The development environments just don't seem to be there yet, mainly the
>>extreme difficulty involved in getting even a simple debugger.  Compared
>>with the relative simplicity and power of VS2003, it still is much better
to
>>author in VS and run on Mono.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>But the development environment *is* there as far as some people would
>be concerned, vim has come with C# syntax highlighting and indenting
>rules for a while now and quite frankly that is more than some people
>need.  The development environment isn't the language. The language
>(that is the compiler, the runtime environment and the libraries) is a
>tool, just as the editor you might prepare the source code in is. 
>
>I guess this divergence of viewpoints is an amusing consequence of the
>strange nexus around mono - on the one hand those coming from the MS
>side and used to the monolithic application and on the other those
>coming from the more tools oriented approach that arises in the Unix
>world.
>
>  
>
>>That is already a great thing, so it's not a knock on Mono or peoples'
>>efforts, but there's still work to be done.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>But probably by others than the core mono developers.  That's the funny
>thing about open source projects - people tend to concentrate on the
>things that they think are important. I generally find that if one
>disagrees with those priorities then the best way to sort it out is by
>supplying some code oneself.
>
>/J\
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com
>>[mailto:mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of PFJ
>>Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 4:55 AM
>>To: mono
>>Subject: Re: [Mono-list] Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in
>>realbusiness?
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Mono 1.0 was shipped awhile ago, and I'm really excited
>>>about that... but now the natural question is:
>>>
>>>  "Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in real business?"
>>>      
>>>
>>Depends on the context. For winforms, no. 1.2 will have that and it
>>should rock.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>... and one more question is
>>>
>>>  "Will Novell provide support, documentation, etc.?"
>>>  "If yes, by when?"
>>>      
>>>
>>monodoc already has the documentation. As C# is already a standardised
>>language, whatever is in the ECMA standard or the MS documentation
>>should follow.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Behind MS .NET there is a huge development team,
>>>support, documentation, and continuity... and I
>>>think Novell should offer the same, but till now
>>>I don't see anything in that way.
>>>      
>>>
>>There is with Mono. The big difference is that (I would guess) the
>>majority of those working on Mono aren't on the Novell payroll - it's
>>the biggest difference between Open and Closed source. Take OpenOffice,
>>there are well over 200 people actively working on it, yet only about 15
>>work for Sun!
>>
>>TTFN
>>
>>Paul
>>    
>>

_______________________________________________
Mono-list maillist  -  Mono-list@lists.ximian.com
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list

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