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

[ted leslie]

Everyone has their opinions ..

I use mono in a production environment, for a med sized pizza franchise in Canada,
and hopefully soon rolling out a system using mono for one of the largest pizza companies in the
world.

I find mono rock solid.
Regardless of how solid .Net 2.0 is your still running it on a OS i.e. windows 2003 server, etc,
that is a alpha/beta version of an OS at best ..
so whats better a "VS.Net 2005 considered superior to mono" as you say (but i dont agree)
on a alpha/beta OS,
or Mono on a bullit proof OS i.e. Linux

end result is mono on linux is going to smoke MS .Net on a MS OS each and every time.

-tl

On Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:53:42 -0700
<mail.matt.mcdonald at gmail.com> wrote:

> ISV adoption is going to take a while in my opinion. .NET guys are mostly
> windows guys, and at the moment VS.NET 2005 is considered superior to mono
> on MS platforms. Most *nix people that would use .NET are already Java guys,
> and most of them probably see little reason to switch from Java.
> 
> Personally I would love to be able to use mono on *nix and therefore escape
> windows-land, however until mono matures some I don't think there's a good
> reason to use it over .NET2.0 in a production environment. That said, if I
> ever have a client that needs both MS and *nix support I wouldn't have any
> problem using mono/.net1.1 
> 	-Matt McDonald
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mono-list-bounces at lists.ximian.com
> [mailto:mono-list-bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Michael Schurter
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 10:07 AM
> To: mono-list at lists.ximian.com
> Subject: Re: [Mono-list] Moving from Mono/C# from C/Linux world
> 
> Honey, Steve wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> .Net and therefore Mono is a complete platform/framework whereas
> it sounds like you use the more traditional C/Unix environment of C as 
> the language, and Unix as the platform.  There's no reason you can't use 
> the same development methodology with Mono (small apps, shell ties them 
> together), but I think you'll be disappointed with the performance.
> 
> IMHO Mono will work much better if you work toward adopting it not just 
> as a language, but as a framework.  Use remoting instead of sockets and 
> pipes.  Write larger applications, so you don't have to tie them 
> together with shell scripts.  And definitely encourage good OO 
> programming techniques so that your entire organization can reuse code 
> and build a common internal framework.
> 
> This is just my $0.02.  I'm not saying Mono won't work as a drop-in 
> replacement for small C apps.  I'm just saying thats not where its 
> strengths lie.
> 
> > 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?
> 
> This seems to be a pretty common fear, but I think you can be at ease
> about the longevity of Mono.  First of all subscribing to the mono-devel
> list will give you a good idea of how quickly mono is progressing.  Also
> Mono has a major corporate backer, Novell.  While Novell has seen better
> days, they're not going away anytime soon, and they've completely
> committed to Linux and Mono as their platform.
> 
> For the most part, the free and open source software world has accepted
> Mono after some trepidation.  Popular databases distribute Mono specific
> interfaces, and many popular Java projects have been ported (such as
> (N)Hibernate or iText#).  RedHat's Fedora distribution even includes
> Mono now, even though RedHat remains very committed to Java in the
> enterprise (vs. Mono/.Net).
> 
> Also, the ECMA specifications themselves seem to be constantly
> improving. There were lots of exciting language and framework improves 
> in .Net 2.0, and lots of interesting work being done for 3.0.
> 
> The main area I see Mono acceptance as being slow is ISVs, and thats
> because they're probably using Microsoft .Net, C++, or Java as their
> development environment.  I think as Linux continues to gain market
> share and the support of ISVs, you'll see more ISVs choosing .Net & Mono
> as their cross platform development framework.  However, thats largely
> speculation, and there's a pretty good argument for Java
> staying/becoming dominant in the cross platform space.
> 
> -- 
> Michael Schurter
> Synthesys Computer Solutions
> http://www.synthesyssolutions.com/
> michaelss at users.sourceforge.net
> 
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