[Mono-list] Philosophical Question - Why .NET on UNIX?

[Andreas Färber]

Mike,

In short, you are mixing up concepts.

First, the CLI is not ActiveX. To my knowledge Mono does not have  
dependencies on any COM replacement technologies.

Second, the big difference between C#/Java and Delphi/Pascal/... is  
not the C-like-or-not syntax but the managed environment it's  
executed in, replacing null pointer references previously leading to  
immediate segmentation faults with exceptions the program can easily  
handle. Mono and .NET handle many languages, not just C#.

Third, .NET is not just a replacement for Java. It fixes many  
limitations Java still has and C#/VB.NET introduced some nice  
aglnuage features which Java got only afterwards (1.5). Java is still  
lacking a convenient bridge algorithm like p/invoke (JNI is not an  
equivalent, it compares better to embedding Mono).

Fourth, in your argument that you don't want JavaScript and ActiveX  
in your browser you are completely missing the point that Mono is not  
a browser technology. It can be used for exactly what you expressed a  
wish for, transmitting data from one location to another without  
rendering.

Hope this clarifies some things.

Andreas