Mono's WinForms 2.0 Implementation Completed

adrian.henke writes "After four years of development, 115K lines of source code, and 6,434 commits, Jonathan Pobst announces that Mono's WinForms 2.0 implementation is now complete. This announcement has been long awaited by any .NET WinForms developer who has ever tried to get an applications to work on Linux using Mono."

This will be a big help

[Pikoro]

Currently working on a C# implementation of a web based in house CRM system.

Going to be nice to finally be able to support our Linux desktops as well.

We'll see how porting goes and if it's really worth the trouble.

Re:

[pembo13]

So the requirements of your business problem required cross-platform support, yet you chose a tool which is decidedly not cross-platform? Why?

Re:This will be a big help

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did he say that cross-platform support was required? There's a big difference between something that's required and something that's nice.

Re:

[Haeleth]

So you don't think it's a bit odd for any organisation that has Linux desktops as well as Windows desktops to deliberately choose a potentially-Windows-only system for developing corporate tools? Particularly one that's practically indistinguishable from Java, which runs perfectly on both Windows and Linux by design.

Re:This will be a big help

[ushering05401]

"Particularly one that's practically indistinguishable from Java, which runs perfectly on both Windows and Linux by design."

Except that Java doesn't run perfectly on Windows and Linux. Many people see C# as a language that set out to be a better Java than Java, and many people feel that on the Windows platform it succeeds. Combine that with the existing Windows install base and you have a pretty compelling reason to develop in C# over Java.

Ten years down the line, however, I could see C# facing extinction if it does not become truly cross platform.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

Have you ever used Java?
I do all the time. Try out Eclipse.org, Netbeans, or Jedit sometime.
They work really well on both Linux and Windows.
I find Java to be a good development system. It even works just fine on the desktop if you write good Java code.
The real problem that java had was applet abuse. Applets are really a great solution to a lot of problems. The problem was when people start to use them for things like Hover buttons and other useless stuff that now is often written in flash.. The junk also gi

Re:

[smbarbour]

The biggest gripe I have about Java is that when no more applications are using the JVM, it doesn't go away. It just sits there wasting resources with no option to terminate it other than by force.

I have taken classes on programming in Java, but since I had no real-world use for it, I have subsequently forgotten it, just as I have all but forgotten C/C++. The business world wants results now. They don't pay you to build each wheel from raw lumber when it's faster and cheaper to buy them pre-made.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

That is one of the strengths of Java, there are so many libraries that getting a good application out the door is pretty dang fast. I think C# is much the same.
As for the JVM. It should be swapped out to VM if it is not being used and the ram is needed. So it hanging around isn't that big of a deal on a modern OS. Goodness only knows how much of .NET hangs around when it isn't in use.

Re:

[abigor]

Er...hopefully you realise that the great, vast majority of server-side and webapp business programming is in Java, and has been for ages. Java is the new Cobol.

Re:

[radish]

Ermm...what?? Java (generally) works on a single app per JVM model, in fact I have many servers running multiple JVMs (the merits of that is another discussion!). The JVM most certainly does go away when the app does, primarily because the JVM _is_ the app. If you're talking about applets then the browser is responsible for running the lifecycle of the shared JVM in that case, talk to them.

Re:

[radish]

What is it about Slashdot and the "Java isn't cross platform" FUD?. I've been a Java developer for around 8 years now. In all that time, developing server side and client side apps I can count on one finger the number of times I've had an app behave significantly differently between platforms. Java really does a fantastic job of running on pretty much any hardware you throw it at - typically I develop/unit test locally on XP and deploy serverside stuff out to Solaris & Linux for QA/prod.

It. Just. Works.

Re:This will be a big help

[WED Fan]

Particularly one that's practically indistinguishable from Java

Knock knock.

Who's there?

...long pause...

Java.

The only reason, ONLY reason, to use Java is because you are psychotic and have a deep, long standing hate for your users and wish to inflict some of the most insidious pain and torment upon them.

Re:

[mweather]

I thought that was the reason to use Mono.

Re:

[gstoddart]

The only reason, ONLY reason, to use Java is because you are psychotic and have a deep, long standing hate for your users and wish to inflict some of the most insidious pain and torment upon them.

Well, I do hate my users and wish to inflict pain on them, but I don't want to use Java.

Is there a way I can inflict pain and torment in a platform agnostic way? ;-)

Cheers

Re:

[oliderid]

My company uses mono c# for a relatively big in house project too.

Here how the selection has been made.
"I like c#." stated the boss.
"Why not java?" A Microsoft language on a Linux server?"
"I don't care that you hate Microsoft. Lets focus on the language's merit. These elegant get and set will save us hundreds of redundant methods. See how simple delegate and Event handling are. Environment? I don't like Eclispe. I like MonoDevelop...Ok it is a bit buggy (not anymore), but this IDE took all the best f

Re:

[smbarbour]

I just noticed something that no one else mentioned... If it's a web-based system, how will the WinForms functionality help?

WinForms is just for desktop apps, not web apps. (ASP.NET pages rendering HTML that is W3C compliant rather than "works great in IE" is another issue entirely.)

But can I actually use it for anything?

[beoba]

..and still nothing on whether WinForms is legally safe to use.

By that standard linux isn't safe to use either

[leftie]

SCO still has a few law schools worth of lawyers on retainer, and a new group of big bucks sugar daddies to fund a few more rounds of lawsuits.

These extremists are not going to surrender. They see open source/free software as a form of communism. These are not the sort of people who call off an already declared war. They are going to keep on filing new lawsuits until they manage to land their lawsuit in the courtroom of a judge who is just as warped and extreme as they are.

And how do you think Alito will feel about Linux?

[leftie]

Scalia? Roberts? Thomas?

The final judgement by the Roberts & Co. is not likely to be one you're gonna like.

Re:

[Vexorian]

Err, of course it isn't legally safe to use it. Microsoft hasn't ever released it to ECMA, it is not protected by OSP or whatever non-sense.

Re:

[edalytical]

Worse, call the layers.

The police are to busy raiding trailer parks, writing traffic tickets, busting drug users, and harassing kids.

Re:But can I actually use it for anything?

[Vectronic]

"Worse, call the layers"

Which layer? does Mono have a self-destruct layer?

using System.Microsoft.Infringement;

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
      If (Patents.Count > 0)
      {
            ForEach(Match match in Patents
            {
                  Console.WriteLine(match.patentname + ": " + match.patentcode);
            }
      }
}

Error Buffer Overflow

Yeah, yeah... you meant "lawyers" I know... and I dont code in C# so it might not do anything anyways...but... "call the layers" made me laugh...

Re:

[YttriumOxide]

I know you said you don't code C#, but really that's no excuse for missing a close bracket at the end of the ForEach statement (which, just FYI, should be "foreach" in C#, this isn't VB.net!)

Anyway, I laughed, and if I'd had mod points, you'd have got a "Funny" from me.

Re:

[tomhudson]

Gawd, such a waste of white space. Let the holy brace wars begin ...

BTW, for all those elsewhere in the comments who are raving about C$ .... oops, C#, C# isn't going much anywhere in comparison to either java or c or c++, or even vb [tiobe.com].

Re:

[Wildclaw]

"Lies damn lies and statistics"

I like statistics and number, but unless you understand what you are basing everyhing on, they are useless and misrepresenting.

THe TIOBE index is estimating use based on hits on search engines, and specifically a very specific query " programming". It is no wonder that C# gets left behind considering that one big selling point of .NET is the language agnostic part.

This is especially noticed when you compare the searches "c# programming" on google which gives 640,000 hits while

Re:

[Rysc]

He also said ForEach, which is a syntax error. "foreach" is correct for c#. Case matters.

"This announcement has been long awaited ...

[Helmholtz]

...by any .NET WinForms developer who has ever tried to get an applications to work on Linux using Mono."

All five of them.

Re:

[pembo13]

Some people realllyyyyy like .NET. I use .NET all the time, but I can't say I like it half as much as Python.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Any language that requires me to pay attention to white-space as much as Python should be dragged into the streets and beaten.

Sorry.

Re:

[mweather]

If you have problems with whitespace in python, you're doing something wrong. My 6 year old nephew picked it up right away. Granted he's not writing anything complex.

Re:

[Just Some Guy]

Any editor that requires me to pay attention to white-space as much as Notepad should be dragged into the streets and beaten.

Fixed that for you.

Re:"This announcement has been long awaited ...

[thegrassyknowl]

Five? I think you should stop rounding up to a whole hand!

Mono is good stuff

[Ed Avis]

Come on now, this is a pretty significant step. Lots of Slashdotters must be stuck developing Windows .NET applications and would love to find a way to deploy them on Linux. If you haven't tried it, Mono is pretty cool: copy your .NET executable to Linux and run

% export MONO_IOMAP=all
% mono my_program.exe

You might be surprised how well it works.

Re:

[BytePusher]

I am one of them.

Re:

[Alex Belits]

One of them is, I guess, Miguel himself.

Still three left.

Re:

[smbarbour]

Go ahead and put me on that list. I've been looking for a way to program for Linux without using a masochistic language for a while now.

Why should I need to use a language where I have control of everything if I don't need to do anything out of the ordinary? It's non-conducive to productivity to have more control than necessary, and bugs in parts of the code that I don't need control over lead to security vulnerabilities.

Re:

[Alex Belits]

Two left.

Very nice

[nuzak]

> I use .NET all the time, but I can't say I like it half as much as Python.

I know what you mean -- ELF just doesn't hold a candle to Perl.

Re:

[jamesh]

I can kind of see the point you were trying to make, but .NET doesn't just refer to the bytecode interpreter - it also refers to the runtime libraries etc, which is I think the point that the GP was trying to make.

The fact that python can run under .NET confuses the issue a bit too... but I think most of us can get our heads around it :)

SWF GUI builder?

[IBBoard]

Does this mean we can finally get a SWF GUI builder in MonoDevelop on Linux?

I've got a couple of apps I wrote while I was using Windows and now I use Fedora Linux. The back-end library code and my newer apps that use GTK# are fine to edit in MonoDevelop, but I've got a VirtualBox install with WinXP and Visual Studio in it for now so that I can update the System.Windows.Forms layouts when I need to.

Hopefully the "API complete" also means they'll fix some of the odd rendering I've seen at times :)

Re:

[IBBoard]

I meant System.Windows.Forms, not Shockwave Flash ;)

But why the Win32 style in WinForms?

[master_p]

From the blog:

You can use handles in Winforms, they just do not map to an actual HWND on non-Win32 systems, but you can definitely use them, and you can even override WndProc methods on derived classes from Control and process a pile of WM_ messages that Mono's Winforms actually builds on.

Why WndProc, HWND and WM_ messages are still there? I understand Microsoft built a software monopoly by mixing Window System management and a GUI toolkit together (and transferring it to .NET ensures that monopoly), but isn't .NET supposed to be one of the most advanced toolkits out there? Having to rely on WndProc, HWND and WM_ messages seems a very bad design for me (I've been developing MFC apps for a decade now and I know of the numerous problems that might come up), and unfortunately Mono WinForms copied that in order to be compatible with .NET.

Initially I thought 'wow, a contender to Qt/Java for building cross-platform apps', but after reading the blog and being an supporter of anything but Win32 (the ugliest API ever written), I will think twice before using Mono or .NET for cross platform development.

Re:But why the Win32 style in WinForms?

[jonwil]

Use GTK# if you want a cross-platform UI toolkit based on .NET.

This work on WinForms is intended to provide a way to run .NET applications written for Windows on top of Mono. And for doing that, it has to be compatible with the Microsoft implementation of WinForms.

Re:

[master_p]

But if I want my app to be cross platform, why not right it in GTK# from the beginning?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Because GTK# is not a language? And because it's not tipped over?

Re:

[master_p]

Sorry, I meant 'write'. But the question is still valid. If I am going to write a cross platform app, why choose a toolkit with so many platform-specific -isms, like win32-isms (WM_ messages, HWND, WndProc etc) and not choose one that makes more sense, like GTK#?

Re:

[Jamie Lokier]

You can, and I recommend it. An app I was involved with switched from WinForms to Gtk# on Windows because Winforms just isn't that good. It was a great improvement.

I understand that Winforms 2 is catching up with Gtk and every other toolkit though: it does widget layout for you now! (wow!) (sarcasm).

Re:

[ChatHuant]

If I am going to write a cross platform app, why choose a toolkit with so many platform-specific -isms, like win32-isms (WM_ messages, HWND, WndProc etc) and not choose one that makes more sense, like GTK#?

Because the "cross-platform" requirement often doesn't exist, at least not during the design of V1.0 of an application. The application is intended to work on a certain platform. A design requirement for "cross-platform compatibility" will have a major impact on resources and budget (think for example

Re:But why the Win32 style in WinForms?

[Haeleth]

unfortunately Mono WinForms copied that in order to be compatible with .NET.

Um, yes, Windows compatibility was kind of the entire point of supporting Winforms, you know?

If you don't want to be compatible with Win32, use GTK#.

Re:

[argent]

I understand Microsoft built a software monopoly by mixing Window System management and a GUI toolkit together (and transferring it to .NET ensures that monopoly), but isn't .NET supposed to be one of the most advanced toolkits out there?

I think you answered your own question.

I don't know about "one of the most advanced toolkits out there", but it's an environment developed for a company that's been so reluctant to consider doing anything that might hurt their moneymaker that they've crippled project after

Re:

[nuzak]

Winforms is the old and busted tech that has all sorts of compatibility kludges to be backward compatible. The new sexiness is WPF, which unfortunately isn't even on Mono's roadmap (Silverlight is just a subset of it).

Timing is everything

[jalefkowit]

Six months after Microsoft's CTO declares WinForms dead [blogspot.com], Mono supports it. That's timing, baby!

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Actually, that's wonderful timing. It means that they provide support for legacy applications but don't actually (in this case) help Microsoft sell a current product. Did you think those WinForms programs were going to disappear now that WinForms was declared dead?

Just five more years

[jgoemat]

And we'll have WPF support...

Re:

[Metasquares]

What platforms? .NET is very clunky, but it still seems very popular.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be interested in knowing what .NET is clunky in comparison to. If you mention Apple's Objective C approach, you probably don't deserve to have an opinion here.

WinForms as a library is a little old fashioned, but in combination with Visual Studio it's very slick and one of the most productive GUI environments around for building desktop applications. If you want to build fruity super-slick GUIs, you have WPF to do that (but the Visual Studio designer isn't as nice).

There isn't a better platform on Window

Re:

[mweather]

Tcl/Tk?

Re:

[benwaggoner]

For real designer-style design of WPF/Silverlight apps, you want to be using the Expression Studio instead (particularly Design and Blend).

Re:

[Spy der Mann]

Behold the power of marketing! This is the reason why Microsoft platforms are so popular. I still remember the days where .NET was marketed as the "next big thing" and courses and seminars were practically around every corner. But what is its real technical merit?

This is one of the reasons why I hate Microsoft. If they invested at least 10% on development what they invest in marketing, this would be a much better place.

Re:

[Da Fokka]

The GP post named a reason why .NET is widely used: productivity. You do not respond to this argument but assert that anyone who like .NET must have been swayed by marketing. Admittedly, the GP post was sparse on argumentation but it was pretty informative compared to your rant.

I've been developing in C#/.NET for the past four years and I really like .NET (and I do have some experience with Java). There are three arguments why I like .NET:
- For many design scenario's, developing in .NET is incredibl

Re:

[LingNoi]

What a crap comment why did you even both?

1) Do you really think I am going to take your word on if it's productive or not?

2) So the only reason you think .NET is a better solution is because you like the text editor?

Give me a break, come back with some better arguments and maybe I could take you seriously, right now you sound like a marketing drone. Saying "developing in .NET is incredibly productive" is not a reasonable argument.

Re:

[Da Fokka]

What a crap comment why did you even both?

1) Do you really think I am going to take your word on if it's productive or not?

Okay, I'll bite.

Of course productivity is a good argument. In fact, it is *the* most important argument. A platform is a tool, enabling a programmer to develop solutions to a specific problem. If anything it should be productive because that's it's main purpose.

What you probably meant is that I did not support the productivity argument with examples, which is a valid point. Therefore so

Re:too little, too late?

[DigitlDud]

I'm also very interested to hear what these platforms are.

Re:too little, too late?

[nguy]

It is interesting that now that Mono is getting to a more complete (and possibly usable state), most developers have moved beyond the .NET hype and onto more elegant development platforms...

Please stop conflating Mono and .NET. Mono supports .NET, but that's not its primary API.

In fact, the primary API is the same API lots of open source software uses: Gnome, Gtk+, and many standard open source libraries. All Gnome apps using Mono use the Gtk+ APIs.

I wish there were better alternatives, but C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop is probably the most elegant development platform right now. Nothing else really comes close. Python is a more elegant language but doesn't have a comparable IDE. Objective-C and Cocoa are messily intertwined with C and C APIs. And Java is a bloated pig.

Re:

[revlayle]

Maybe the mono devs can get an implementation of IronPython going? Then you can have Python + a damn good IDE (i was surprised how well Mono Develop is myself)

Re:too little, too late?

[setagllib]

IronPython already works fine on Mono, but it doesn't have IDE support. PyDev in Eclipse is pretty nice for pure Python and Jython.

Personally I'd rather work directly in Python/Ruby on GTK/Qt than go through an extra layer that is .NET. Maybe Anjuta could stop sucking and support Python, or Eclipse could have Glade integration.

And while Mono's not horrible, but it's not nearly as fast as the Sun JVM, so if I want fast bytecode I'd rather use Java than C#.

Re:

[Alex Belits]

And Python/Qt on GTK+/Qt isn't "an extra layer" because?

Because Mono is sitting between a language (Python) and widget set (GTK+) as an imitation of a Microsoft product designed to shield a language (sometimes Python but mostly C#) from a widget set and OS API (Win32).

Except, of course, Win32 API is a disgusting piece of shit that should better be shielded from developers by something, and GTK+ is a widget set with a very straightforward design. Heck, Windows GTK+ port even runs on top of Win32. And so does Windows port of Qt, with absolutely no need for .Net,

Re:

[Slime-dogg]

Because Mono is sitting between a language (Python) and widget set (GTK+) as an imitation of a Microsoft product designed to shield a language (sometimes Python but mostly C#) from a widget set and OS API (Win32).

Python gets compiled to bytecode, which is then read by an interpreter that sits between it and the widget set.

The .NET version sees Python getting compiled to IL (bytecode), which is read by the Mono runtime.

It looks like you get the exact same thing, honestly. All it comes down to is which platform is best for actual compilation.

Re:too little, too late?

[setagllib]

It's a pretty thin layer compared to an entire extra base library + bytecode runtime + OS abstraction.

PyGTK layers:

Your code (python)
PyGTK code (python)
Python runtime (C)
PyGTK->GTK binding (C)
GTK+libc code (C)
kernel (C)

IronPython + Gtk# layers:

Your code (python)
IronPython code (python)
IronPython runtime (CLI)
Gtk# code (CLI)
Mono base (CLI)
Mono runtime (C)
Gtk# -> GTK binding (C)
GTK+libc code (C)
kernel (C)

That's a fun one to deploy, let me tell you.

Re:

[samkass]

"And Java is a bloated pig."

At the risk of feeding the trolls, in what way is C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop less of a bloated pig than Java? Java is actually a very fast, extremely productive platform to develop on with a top-shelf toolchain (in fact several).

Re:

[sumdumass]

I don't know about the definition of bloated, bit it is a pig on resources and slow as hell on my older computers. Perhaps that is the inference he was attempting to make.

Now, X seems to slow some things down a little but I haven't really seen the comparative mono applications act in the same ways as java seems to. However, it should also be noted that I can't really compare apples to apples here because I don't have applications doing the same things in similar ways written in the different languages to re

Re:

[LarsWestergren]

Java is fast? Go try to run Azureus and weep.

The performance of a single benchmark is hardly indicative of a whole platform... you might as well say - "Linux is fast? Go try run Azureus and weep".

Re:

[Corwn of Amber]

Okay.

"Java might be a great development platform, but the performance of java apps on the desktop is so pitiful they're painful to use."

More?

"Sever-side apps written in Java have great perfs, however, which is easily explained since they're meant to be run on a score of UltraSPARC hyperthreaded multicore CPUs that command a ton of RAM."

Better that way, yes, you're right.

Re:

[DuckDodgers]

Java loads a huge number of libraries at startup, and then as it translates its bytecode into machine code there is a lag. So the code startup is a very royal pain in the ass.

But once your Java application or server is running, the performance of a decent Java app can be within 20% of C++, which is plenty quick and much faster than any scripting language equivalent. You don't need a commercial grade server.

I'm not saying Java's the greatest language. But a lot of people seem to think the language i

Re:

[nuzak]

> so that the devs get to write it once and debug it everywhere

"Write once Debug Anywhere". No, you're not repeating that like a mantra or anything. Can you name even one time this has held true for Java in your experience? For bonus points, show me how this does not apply to some other language.

Re:

[nuzak]

> In the 21st century, the fact that you like technology does not automatically make you smart.

I like. Yoink!

Re:

[rmdir -r *]

The performance of a single benchmark is hardly indicative of a whole platform... you might as well say - "Linux is fast? Go try run Azureus and weep".

You are right. But as far as I can tell, the GP is also correct, there are no pleasant, responsive desktop Java apps. And Azureus and Limewire are certainly the flagship Java desktop applications right now.

Re:

[John Betonschaar]

The only thing slow about Java are the GUI libraries and the initial VM startup, for non-interactive stuff it is actually very fast. Anyone wanting to develop GUI applications using Java should use some kind of native GUI library through JNI.

Re:

[AmaDaden]

Very true. Because of this Java's current market is web sites. I'm not referring to applets but rather JSPs. It runs as a server so the start up time is a non-issue. Since it is being used to generate HTML and not really render anything in the native environment it does not touch the GUI libraries. Because of this is makes an excellent platform for web apps. Off the top of my head I know it's used by ebay and a few banks. It's also the back bone of the Google web toolkit so it's what runs gmail and several

Re:

[ADRA]

Swing / AWT in modern JVM's has been improving leaps and bounds over previous versions. One of the really really big hinderances of java's GUI responsiveness is that many developers don't thread tasks that take a fairly lengthy time to perform when executing on the event dispatch thread!!!!

Just think about this:

GUI event
V
Perform seconds Long DB query
V
Show results on screen

Unless you break into a new thread to manage the DB update, thats SECONDS of ti

Re:too little, too late?

[Simon Brooke]

Java is fast? Go try to run Azureus and weep.

Oh, you do? And you think it is fast? Try utorrent on Windows or Transmission on OSX or KTorrent on Linux some time.

People can write slow programs in any language. The question is, can moderately competent programmers write fast, efficient, maintainable programs in them? Pointing to one example is pointless. Back on topic, a quick check on Alioth [debian.org] will show you that overall, Java is faster than C#/Mono but uses more memory (although on some benchmarks the opposite is the case). It's also worth pointing out that although Java is not faster than C++ on any benchmark, it's substantially slower on only three. In general the performance of a program has much more to do with good design and good algorithms than it has to do with choice of language.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

wish there were better alternatives, but C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop is probably the most elegant development platform right now.

You'll find that that's because C# was designed with an IDE in mind. Everything is statically typed (for intellisense) and the object oriented nature allows for easy code completion. Even look at the new LINQ (Allows you to query arrays/lists/etc. in memory)

var result = from dataType in myCollection

Re:

[wootest]

LINQ's order would be logical even if IDEs weren't even involved, since it leads you to define every variable before you use them, which is the default in every other place you use variables. If they had used SQL's order, this basic logical assumption would have been broken. (I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anything the parent said, I just felt this had to be pointed out.)

Re:

[Saffaya]

I can write C# code (or code in most languages), copy and paste it, or make significant edits, and then simply tell the IDE to reformat it.

Which IDE do you use ?
I have nothing like you describe when working with C++ under Visual Studio.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ctrl-A, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-F

Re:

[aldousd666]

I have the same problem with python. Semantic indentation. It's a genuinely dumb idea in my opinion. Other than that, sometimes you need static type checking and compiled (not interpreted) code sometimes you don't. Indentation aside if you want higher performance between these two you'd go for a compiled tongue. If you want something quick to write, and are ok with it being a bit slower running (and have already figured out when to hit the tab key,) then perhaps python is your beast. I don't think that C

Re:

[malevolentjelly]

Say what you will about Mono, I think Microsoft's implementation of .NET is actually a pretty strong contender. If you need to solve a problem in Windows really fast, it can be pretty insanely convenient. I think Powershell in Windows Server basically uses a .NET machine for its shell interface. If you ever need Windows machines and Unix machines to talk to eachother, a Mono compatible implementation could be even more convenient than having Python talk to .NET, which isn't too hard to begin with.

Re:Would be awesome...

[batkiwi]

Info for you: .NET 3.0 is 4 additional dlls, otherwise it IS .NET 2.0. Same runtime/etc. It adds:

-WCF: GREAT new tech. You write a module, and then expose it remotely via config. So if you want to change from Remoting to Compliant Web Services you simply change a config setting. Or you can expose simple services via REST. It abstracts "transport" from "functionality".
-Cardspace: dud. Single sign on/identity mgmt which is being replaced by openID it seems. Cool idea though.
-WPF: Cool new xml based description language to fully abstract process from gui much in the way ASP.NET does. It also lets UI designers "skin" apps seperately from the app code itself. VERY nice tech, especially the bindings.
-WF: Nice tech, not quite mature but neat to use. It allows for program logic to be described in an xml format (XAML) and shown in a gui designer. I really like workflow tech NOT because it lets business users program (it DOESN'T) but because it gives you an artifact that users can understand AND CONFIRM. .NET 3.5 is enhancements and bugfixes of 3.0 PLUS LINQ. LINQ is either the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever, depending on who you ask. I think "both." LINQ allows you to apply "sql-esque" syntax to any IEnumerable provider. So if you have an in memory collection of animals you can do:

var monkeys = from animal in myAnimalsCollection
                              where animal.Type == monkey
                              select new {animal.ID, animal.Name, animal.BirthDay};

foreach(var monkey in monkeys) .... do stuff

Re:Would be awesome...

[setagllib]

LINQ is nice, except it's decades too late. Of the languages in common use today, Python and Ruby have much better alternatives to linq built in (and have had them for many years), and even new languages like Scala support similar functionality.

Your example in Python with a list comprehension, broken down into multiple lines for clarity:

monkeys = [
    (animal.id, animal.name, animal.birthDay)
    for animal in myAnimalsCollection
    if animal.type is monkey
]

And a comprehension of multiple lists is similar:

pairs = [
    (a, b)
    for a in range(10)
    for b in range(10)
    if b == a * 2
]

You have been able to do that for many years in Python, and yet Microsoft fanatics act like it's something new and innovative.

Re:

[mikeburke]

Does the python version read from a database or an XML document?

The LINQ syntax does that. It's not just a fancy way of iterating over an in-memory collection.

Re:Would be awesome...

[makapuf]

The python version reads from an iterable, so it can be a request from a DB or an XML file sending its result one by one. In the case of the Db, the filtering will however be done by python and not in the DB.

However, there are alternative ORM python syntax to DB mappings, such as django syntax

AnimalCollection.filter(type='monkey')[:10].order_by('age')
(talking about simple orms, not full sqlalchemy table declaraions)

Being able to customize filtering of container classes for iterators definition would be cool anyway.

Re:

[Sentry21]

The python version can read from any iterable, which includes collections (lists, tuples, dicts), but also includes things like strings (iterate over letters), files (iterate over lines), and so on.

It can also read from generators, which are objects that retrieve data as its requested; for example, it would be trivial to write a generator that would pull data out of a database, one record (or set of records) at a time. Each time you try to iterate over a generator, it 'creates' data (e.g. from reading a fil

Re:

[Cyberax]

LINQ is different - it's STATICALLY checked while Ruby's or Python's versions are dynamic.

LINQ also introduces type inference, anonymous types and extension methods to C#. While none of this is new, I have not yet seen another _popular_ language supporting it.

Re:

[setagllib]

When you already have a dynamic language, type inference, anonymous types and extension methods are implicit. I'm not arguing every language should be dynamic, but the additions to C# are just solving problems specific to static languages. That's fine - static languages are still much faster than dynamic ones. Just saying, as far as languages go, C# is the one playing catchup, and with about a 20 year gap for many features.

Re:

[Raenex]

The point is if you value static type checking, no popular language has the features of C#. Java will probably get them in version 7 because of all the recent competition, which is a good thing (or maybe a new language like Scala will take over for Java).

So pointing to Python when you want to develop in a static language doesn't make for a good argument.

Re:

[setagllib]

Like I said, I'm only talking about *popular* languages and I didn't claim it was innovative in Python. Python does it and does it well, and unlike Haskell, Python enjoys wide real-world use.

Re:Would be awesome...

[Just Some Guy]

You can use the same LINQ syntax to deal with data from all kind of data sources, that's what it is all about.

All the usernames on a Unix system:

print [line.split(':')[0] for line in file('/etc/passwd')]

Dates from an SQL table:

sth.execute('select invdte from invoice where invid=%(invid)s', {'invid': 1000090340})
print [row[0] for row in sth]

Search Google for "list comprehensions" and print the text of every "<a href" tag on the page:

import urllib2
import BeautifulSoup

agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)'
url = 'http://www.google.com/search?q=list+comprehensions'
google = urllib2.Request(url, headers={'User-Agent': agent})
soup = BeautifulSoup.BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen(google).read())
print [link.contents for link in soup.findAll('a')]

Basically, anything Python can loop across works inside a list comprehension. It's a basic construct of the language.

Re:

[batkiwi]

I'm a python fan, and what you're referring to equates directly to "LINQ to Objects."

However, notice how every piece of code you have is prefaced by 2-5 lines of "other code." SQL/HTTPRequests/whatever. LINQ has the concept of a "provider" which you can implement yourself. The default ones are LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL. MANY others exist though, including a LINQ to Google.

SO while in python you do:

agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)'
u

Re:

[setagllib]

That's true, Python list comprehensions do not support ordering. However, since Python is partly a functional language anyway, it doesn't matter:

a = sorted([comprehension of b])

Or specifying your own comparator:

a = sorted([comprehension of b], cmp = comparator or lambda)

It's even cleaner in Ruby which has nicer closures, but there it's OO instead of functional.

You already know that, but I don't suppose every Slashdot reader does.

And while you have a point that Python list comprehensions in particular do not

Re:

[0xdeadbeef]

And by good, you mean several pages of vague, unsubstantiated fanboy whining, with only one paragraph about .NET that hints at, but does not name, the stupidity of InvokeRequired [microsoft.com].