[Mono-list] Moving from Mono/C# from C/Linux world

[Honey, Steve]

I've been evaluating Mono/C# for a few weeks now and am generally
impressed by what I see.

 

My group works currently in the C/Linux world where we develop near
real-time scientific application software.

 

I'm looking at C#/Mono because: 

a)       Another group at our company uses C# / Windows and they rave
about it.

b)       I'd like to bring get my group using something more modern then
C.

c)       It would be nice if the two groups use the same development
language to encourage code reuse.

 

I have two questions.  

 

The first is what are there any things I need to worry about that would
be difficult to do in the Mono/C# world that are fairly easy and
standard in the C world?  Note we have a distributed environment where
most of the programs are fairly small.  The programs typically perform a
specific function (e.g. ingest the data, or run an algorithm on it) and
then pass it on to the next program.  Data is passed in a number of
ways, but mainly through file sharing and pipes.  We often use shell
scripts to control the flow of data and the programs to do the actual
work.  In addition, we have fair number of existing C functions that I
wish not to duplicate (at least not initially) but I believe I can
incorporate them using SWIG.

 

Secondly, I'm slightly concerned that at some point down the road (say 3
- 5 years) Mono, for whatever reason, will no longer be supported.  From
what I've seen so far, Mono is a solid project with a strong following
of core programmers supporting it and I see no reason why it might fade
away.  But I don't have a good feel for how many people are using it and
if that number is growing from year to year or if it has started to
stagnate, i.e. has Mono hit critical mass?

 

Any feedback to either question would be most appreciated.

Steve

 

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