Is Microsoft's .NET Ecosystem On the Decline?
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Nerval's Lobster writes: In a posting that recently attracted some buzz online, .NET developer Justin Angel (a former program manager for Silverlight) argued that the .NET ecosystem is headed for collapse—and that could take interest in C# along with it. "Sure, you'll always be able to find a job working in C# (like you would with COBOL), but you'll miss out on customer reach and risk falling behind the technology curve," he wrote. But is C# really on the decline? According to Dice's data, the popularity of C# has risen over the past several years; it ranks No. 26 on Dice's ranking of most-searched terms. But Angel claims he pulled data from Indeed.com that shows job trends for C# on the decline. Data from the TIOBE developer interest index mirrors that trend, he said, with "C# developer interest down approximately 60% down back to 2006-2008 levels." Is the .NET ecosystem really headed for long-term implosion, thanks in large part to developers devoting their energies to other platforms such as iOS and Android?
Non-story (Score:5, Insightful)
Submitted by Nerval's Lobster? Check
Shilling for Dice? Check
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Submitted by Nerval's Lobster? Check
Shilling for Dice? Check
I love that everyone hates the cross-promotional crap they try to do.
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Dice? LOL (Score:5, Funny)
According to Dice's data,
Did they read tea leaves or chicken bones?
Re:Dice? LOL (Score:5, Funny)
According to Dice's data,
Did they read tea leaves or chicken bones?
I think they just rolled the.... never mind. That was way too easy.
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Nah, that seems to be way too accurate for Dice.
hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
hogwash
Slashdot layout (Score:5, Informative)
My Slashdot layout just changed, there's no more 'read more' button. Just 'share'. You have to find the small annotation in the top right for the comments? What the hell.
Re:Slashdot layout (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah they're dicking with shit again. Luckily that button is easily blocked by ABP. They've also broken the layout a few times in the last couple of minutes when I've refreshed.
YOU are the scratch monkey! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:YOU are the scratch monkey! (Score:5, Funny)
They're using a new variation of Agile, called "Methagilephetamine".
Still has a few kinks in it, though.
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Yeah apparently. Must be one of the newest posts doesn't allow posting and says it's an "archived discussion" and the other doesn't show any of the comments its supposed to have. *golf clap* Good job, Dice.
Re:YOU are the scratch monkey! (Score:5, Insightful)
FUCK IT! I'll do it live and test it in production!
I want my fucking comment link back. Share? Who wants to share Dice shill stories.
Re:Slashdot layout (Score:5, Insightful)
http://s7.postimg.org/5rhru2q6z/image.png [postimg.org]
http://s7.postimg.org/qacnz544b/image.png [postimg.org]
Not to spoil but the main problems are:
1. People that remained on classic Slashdot theme expects just that: the classic theme. Please don't change it. Considering that the main elements of the articles didn't change much (title, summary, number of comments, submitter, link, etc), the same going for the comments (title, score, commenter, date, etc) it shouldn't be hard to make a separate theme for this (admittedly stubborn) users and leave it alone.
2. The new "cartoon balloon" showing the number of comments is overlapping when the article is collapsed (see first screenshot above)
3. Seems like the old way to show the number of comments was forgotten below the cartoon balloon (see first screenshot above)
4. In the sidebar, seems like "This day on Slashdot" was completely forgotten in the new style (see second screenshot above)
5. It's really acceptable after being bought by Dice to show "Latest Tech Jobs" prominently in the sidebar, we understand that's one of the perks of being the owner. But at least put back the Poll above the fold and push Slashdot Deals and Featured Videos below the fold. 6. It may not have been the intention but it feels really underhanded to replace the (probable) most clicked link in the homepage (Read More) and replace it with the "Share" button. That will more likely to be the main complain, will cost Slashdot a lot of old timers and probably will be as loudly rejected as Beta.
Please put Read More back where it was, I'm sure you guys already realised we are not much a sharing bunch, privacy concerns and all that.
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I'm just UXing here, but point #6 was terribly confusing as it seemed to be part of point #5.
Otherwise spot on. Slashdot should have the community comment/vote on changes and then have a true "beta" (not the shit we had before of course) that people could comment on.
Actually, they should just leave it all alone. There's enough change in the real world, can I have a consistent, expected Slashdot experience?
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They even changed it for classic.slashdot.org, wrtf?
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I don't use much social media so I have no idea if they show up frequently, if at all. The only time I can ever recall seeing one was in an image capture of someone who had (perhaps accidentally) shared a porn video, which for whatever damned reason had Facebook integration.
One would think that people come here to get away from the Facebook crowd and that the Facebook crowd has little interest in what's posted here, so
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Does anyone ever click those share buttons anyways, other than perhaps accidentally?
I click the one on Youtube that sends stuff to G+ sometimes, I figure that actually makes sense. But yeah, it's conceivable that I would use that button myself... again, to send stuff to G+. It's more often I see stuff there that I post here (my last accepted submission, for example) but I do get some good results resharing slashdot stories to G+ on occasion.
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I'm old-fashioned. If I want to share, I copy/paste the URL in the social network of choice.
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I got a 503 error earlier and not logged in. :/
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No doubt the work of another fine "UX Engineer".
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Yeah, It's annoying. The new corporate overlords are trying to force us to be "social". They do realize that if we DID want to share, we're savvy enough to share the original link, not a link to slashdot, right? No.. let's not give them that credit.
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http://s7.postimg.org/5rhru2q6z/image.png [postimg.org]
http://s7.postimg.org/qacnz544b/image.png [postimg.org]
Not to spoil but the main problems are:
1. People that remained on classic Slashdot theme expects just that: the classic theme. Please don't change it. Considering that the main elements of the articles didn't change much (title, summary, number of comments, submitter, link, etc), the same going for the comments
Yes. (Score:2)
Know what's on the decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fucking Slashdot is on the decline.
WTF do you think we want ot share Shashdot to Facebook and other shit for?
Fuck you guys suck at maintaining a fucking website. Stop changing everything. Stop trying to be all fucking social media. Just fucking stop.
Fuck you dice, and fuck you Nerval's Lobster -- your apparent function is to write fucking shill articles which point to fucking dice.
Too soon to tell? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the .NET platform now being available for cross platform development I can't see how there could be a decline in C#. It's only been about 6 months since MS offered .NET for other platforms I don't think that's enough time for any valid conclusions to be made. Wait another 6 months to a year and then take another look. I think we will see an increase in C#/.NET reflected in those numbers.
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I think it's great that Microsoft is open-sourcing parts, but it isn't going to make a huge impact.
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Yeah but Linux developers will use C++. It wouldn't be very friendly to the Linux Dev community if the framework wasn't C++ compatible especially since it's the most used language for app dev on Linux.
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You'd have to be an idiot to use .NET for cross-platform development. In five or so years, Microsoft will discontinue cross-platform support, giving some BS excuse, like "no one was using it." What will the cross-platform developers do then, rewrite their code in a language that's really cross-platform? Doubt it.
As I've said here, before, this is just more Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
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Given that it's all open source, fork it?
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We'll see how it goes, but after developing in My Eclispe/Java, XCode/Objective-C, and Visual Studio/C#, I can say without a doubt that VS/C# was the most productive IDE/language I've dealt with.
I seriously have to question people who say this kind of thing. How are you measuring this? In amount of code written? Are you talking about prototypes, or are you talking about maintenance?
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In the amount of time not spent beating my head against the wall.
I'm in management these days, so I only have to deal with it as it impacts my schedules and retention. Upgrading My Eclipse Blue was incredibly painful. I get complaints about memory management, crashes, and EARs missing files. The integrated SVN system makes me weep when I have to try to explain to devs what /move and /switch SVN commands are. Or the inane restrictions our support team puts on our use of the product because they're trying to
More stupid crap... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it actually on the decline? (Score:3)
This seems more like an acknowledgement that ios and android are where the majority of new development jobs are right now than anything else.
Does that mean C# or .NET is on "the decline"? I suppose, strictly speaking yes. But it doesn't remotely mean its on the way to becoming like COBOL where its only used by legacy products. Windows destkop and servers are still being deployed in the millions, and .NET is an excellent platform for new development if you are targeting that market.
Re:Is it actually on the decline? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is it actually on the decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the same analysis that lead people to conclude that because mobile gaming was on the rise, console gaming was therefore going to disappear. And the same logic let pundits to conclude that we're now in a "post-PC" world. The ascendance of one market does cause a shift in proportions of other parts of the market, but doesn't necessarily lead to a complete collapse. Even if .NET is in overall decline, I think that speaks to the larger decline, proportionally speaking, of the desktop PC market. However, Windows still *completely* dominates that market, so .NET/C# will likely remain strong there.
So, I'd say if we're talking about a "decline", that makes sense to me. If we're talking about a "collapse", that's absurd. Even if no one except Windows developers were using it, it would still not go away completely, because that's why the .NET platform and C# language were invented in the first place... to simplify Windows development.
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Separating desktops and servers (which in this case is quite relevant):
Servers can be Windows / Linux / etc. and it doesn't really matter. if I wanted windows, I'd spoool up a windows VM. If I wanted a Linux server, i'd spool up a Linux server instance in a VM. I ONLY WANT Windows/Linux because of the applications that run on them. Server dev environment choice in that respect don't really matter unless you're deeply entrenched in a given vendor's server API stack. I've personally never seen companies do an
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I don't disagree with you. But one role of Windows servers you sort of glossed over is simply: "managing windows desktops" (active directory, group policy, etc, etc). If you are running more than a handful of windows desktops you've probably got a windows server.
And if you've already got a bunch of windows desktops plus a windows server, it doesn't really make sense to spin up one *nix box in that environment unless you really need something that only *nix can do. It generally makes more sense to either use
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unless, of course, you're attempting to run a windows program
I'm not arguing with you that *nix is a better server overall. But windows is a better server if your working with windows apps, serving windows apps, or managing windows desktops.
With 90%+ of the desktop market; most people are running windows applications. They are using remote desktop into servers running windows applications. They are using local windows applications that talk to server windows applications. etc.And the whole thing is managed by another windows server running active directory, and their
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
EOM
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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if you didnt sell and they knew you wrote C# they used the proprietary compiler against you and simply reimplemented your software with undocumented methods and subroutines that ran faster than yours. Theyd sit out your litigation until you folded, buy up your shop for cheap, and with a few modifications rebrand your application as a microsoft component.
Has that ever happened?
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Short and sweet, .NET was a response to Java.
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C# and .NET were Microsoft's answer to Borland's Delphi (which was their answer to VB) and Java. They poached Anders from Borland after he created Delphi and they didn't want another ass kicking. I have always wondered if he had the idea for .NET before going to the dark side and that Borland, when they went off their their idiotic Java vision quest and became Inprise, blew him off and Microsoft realized the potential of his vision. He has had free reign pretty much ever since.
I don't dislike the .NET p
Slashdot on the decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
This social media S--T they keep pushing.
These DICE links and plugs that we keep getting from Nerval's Lobster?
C# isn't declining in popularity from where I sit - Slashdot is.
Why do I come here?
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C# isn't declining in popularity from where I sit - Slashdot is.
You don't need to be a Kreskin.
Re:Slashdot on the decline? (Score:4, Funny)
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For the same reason I do - to yell at stupid people? Because there's not really much else to offer.
What about programming in general? (Score:2)
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Just as you need glue code to tie together libraries to make an application you need glue code to tie together SaaS services to make a unified service. The libraries now are just SaaS APIs.
Maybe, but that doesn't imply the future is bleak (Score:3)
Microsoft is pushing .net in directions no one thought it would five years ago in terms of being an open development platform. I think this will help boost c# popularity if anything. C# is a nice language to work with, and Visual Studio is a nice IDE to work with for the most part (it's virtual filesystem has got to go, and needs better RCS integration a la Eclipse).
Of course not (Score:2)
Terrible Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Stick with program managing, Justin. Actually, given you were responsible for Silverlight, find some other career entirely.
If you check Perl [indeed.com], Java [indeed.com], PHP [indeed.com] or C++ [indeed.com] on Indeed.com, you will see exactly the same trends.
If you perform his same terrible analysis of the TIOBE index [tiobe.com], PHP, C++, VB.NET, Objective-C are all going to collapse. Apparently Java has been "heading for collapse" since 2004.
People who can't do statistics shouldn't report on them.
The problem does not appear to be that C# is becoming less popular (than other languages), it's appears that custom application development as a whole is becoming less popular than it was a few years ago.
This may be due to the economy, outsourcing, mobile platforms or whatever. You can't suddenly pull reasons out of your ass like this being due to "Microsoft’s ever revolving door of new technologies", despite how pissed off you are at them for shit-canning your pet project.
When doing stats on whether something is less popular, it's helpful to ask "less popular than what". Sure, it may be less popular than it used to be, but so are the competing languages. This does not indicate that the C# ecosystem is going to collapse.
Indeed (Score:2)
Clickbait (Score:2)
Let me guess, fewer people are using /. so the bright idea is to post flaimbait stories to try and drive people back to the site?
Fail.
Help us with market research, please! (Score:2)
According to Dice's data, the popularity of C# has risen over the past several years; it ranks No. 26 on Dice's ranking of most-searched terms. But Angel claims he pulled data from Indeed.com that shows job trends for C# on the decline.
In other words,
"We cannot figure out what is going on in the IT marketplace, but we are supposed to be a resource for the IT marketplace. Please, help us analyze these trends because we cannot reconcile the differences ourselves!"
It's really obvious why (Score:2)
Like any statistic, it must be compared to something. In this case C# is being compared with other languages that have been riding the mobile device market. With MS's mobile market share being what it is it's not surprising that C# is appearing to have weaker growth compared to say C++,Java...
At the end of the day C# is just another way to write code. If you are good at reading/writing code it doesn't matter what language it's in. My strongest language is C# because it's what I've done for the last 8 years
Microsoft killed .Net. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft sealed the fate of .Net by not choosing it as the basis for Windows 8.x and the metro UI. That indicated that Microsoft no longer sees .Net as the next gen framework for Windows, .Net has, of course, done its job. Which was to kill Java. Which, for desktop applications, it has.
As a Windows developer, it leaves me with somewhat of a dilemma. Which framework is the way forward on the Windows platform? It's not MFC, nor Silverlight. Is it .Net? Is it Metro?
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MS didn't kill Java - Oracle did. ...
And on a sidenote:
You might want to consider abandoning Windows as a plattform.
If you're looking for something stable with a brand and a future, perhaps you should try the Google ecosystem. With either web or android. I see Windows on the downslope. It only takes a critical mass to see Exchange as a dated groupware model and moving to Google and to see a subscription to office software for the bizar contraption it is and moving that to Googles free version aswell. Once t
See Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:2)
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Too much "special sauce" in .NET (Score:2)
Just about every .NET implementation I see has all sorts of crap in there, completely black-box.
And when it breaks, usually because the programmers assume some bog-standard "clean" environment, there's no actual "troubleshooting" recourse.
They don't search for C# (Score:2)
Most C# developer I've met over the years search without the C# tag like I do. I'll do something like this: ".NET copy filestream to memorystream".
As a Java/C/Python Multiplatform Programmer. (Score:2)
No. Its not an the decline. It's a rock solid language and in a few cases i had to bind complex functionality on windows systems in a controlled way, and used C# and it was a very good experience. I donâ(TM)t see any reason that the language will decline soon. maybe it wont have explosive growth, but Java did neither grow from one day to the next.
Iteration, Openness (Score:2)
There's three basic things that Microsoft is doing right these days and it applies to .NET as well as many of their other technologies / products.
1. They steadily iterate. .NET had the advantage of avoiding a lot of the bad old parts of Java because it came afterward and the designers had a good handle on what wasn't working. When something is missing or isn't working well, they address it in the next release. Microsoft has had a fairly consistent 7 major releases in 12 years. The longest gap was 2.5 yea
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How much did that low UID cost Microsoft?
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The big problem with MSDN is that they change URL schemes every 2-3 years, breaking every reference URL that you might have saved. Then there's the almost, but not quite, completely useless form of the documentation which tells you everything you already know without making the water less murky.
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I still love languages like Scala and Python and I still want Linux for most of my web servers, but the gaps are closing and the game is getting really interesting. If you are ignoring Microsoft, you may get caught by surprise.
The funny part is, MS is no longer trying to pretend that the world ends at its bubble - .NET is nice, but not all people like it, and it's not perfect for everything; and that's okay. So, for example, you can do Python using Microsoft tools [visualstudio.com] and on Microsoft [microsoft.com] platforms [github.io] (and yes, it is all open [github.com] source [github.com] under sane licenses like AL 2.0). At the same time, a Microsoft employee [pycon.org] is one of the core CPython maintainers, and is basically responsible for the official Win32 releases. Expect more of that kind of thing in
Nah (Score:2)
When PHBs think of development, they think of one of two things: either an MS Access database with code-behind in VBA, or they think of Visual Studio. Naturally, nearly all of the most useful features of Visual Studio hook into at least some kind of .NET language or runtime.
As long as PHBs continue to consider Microsoft stuff as the "name brand" for software development, like Kleenex for tissues, we won't see .NET going anywhere. After all, if they're willing to bankroll $1M in license fees for a couple hun
.Net the Longest Part of a Windows 7 Reinstall (Score:2)
It takes longer to run the .net updates than it takes for the whole rest of a reinstall.
What crap!
don't think so... (Score:2)
With MS now opensourcing their .NET framework, and more and more crossplatform development enviroments using it, I don't see it happening that it will really go into decline.. Let's not forget C# is a language which is not specifically coupled with .NET..
But what would be the next 'hip' language to do your work in?
.Net will never die (Score:2)
Because the world can never have enough calculator utilities. But mostly because .Net is the perfect zombie code.
It never was on the rise. (Score:2)
.Net, from day one, was a vehicle for clueless middle-managers to justify sitting around blabbering web-economy bullshit [dack.com] and spending ginormous amounts of money for their consulting buddys to scoop up because they have a few devs at hand that are willing to play along and develop under-performing, non-future-safe, overpriced superfluos crappy MS-lockin middleware and shoddy MS SharePain intranets.
I said it when .Net came out, and it holds true to this very day: With Java and other toolsets being FOSS, there
Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again why phones and tablets needed a different programming language?
This is why the one hope for C# is MS's partnership with Xamarin (but I think it's a good one). C# as a cross-platform alternative to Java would be all sorts of wonderful - but I won't believe it until it actually plays out that way. If a year from now there were no gotchas, I can really write an app* in C#, test it on my desktop, then sideload it into an Android and an iThing and get appropriate interfaces, and no surprises have happened with licensing? Well, that's a bright future for C# IMO.
It also doesn't hurt C# that Unity have become the "gateway drug" for game devs, giving another cross-platform venue for C# for those who choose it (it has hurt the Steam store, but that's another story).
*cue the "app" troll
Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps, but that begs the "why not just go with Java?" question, since it supports both Android and every desktop OS (and lets face it NOTHING runs on both iOS and everything else, that's a pipe dream, unless you want to do QT stuff, which is great, but begs ANOTHER question, "why not just use QT/C++?").
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Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Java ON THE DESKTOP has no more security implications than any code written in any other language. Worst case it does something nasty, and Java does NOT sandbox your primary application thread or any of its spawn unless you specifically configure it to do so. So DESKTOP Java is a non-issue.
As for web-browser Java plugins, those are just like all other plugins. They've proven to be open to a number of exploits. If you wouldn't use Flash or Silverlight why would you expect to be able to use Java? I mean I wish Oracle would FIX these issues, but my guess is every piece of web-exposed code in existence is riddled with an endless supply of these security holes, not just plugins.
On the SERVER side there's again no issue, Java is no more or less a security problem than any other application running on your server, all of which you presumably have locked down, vetted heavily, and watch carefully.
There's really no special particular 'Java' security issue. Using .NET, Node.js etc etc etc won't particularly make you more secure on the server-side, and for the rest Java is the same as anything else too. Welcome to the world.
Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps, but that begs the "why not just go with Java?" question
Java is .. not very good. I've alternated between Java and C# professionally over the past 8 years or so, and while they used to be quite similar, C# is worlds ahead now (thanks, Oracle!).
lets face it NOTHING runs on both iOS and everything else, that's a pipe dream,
Check out Xamarin [wikipedia.org]. "With a C# shared codebase, developers can use Xamarin tools to write native iOS, Android, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms. Xamarin has over 1 million developers in more than 120 countries around the world as of May 2015."
There's a reason this is MS's last, best hope for C#. If the Xamarin stuff is bundled free with Visual Studio 2015's free version (as has been promised, but we'll see), it will be something special. If it were anyone but MS, I'd say right now this was going to be a huge win, but it's such a big change in attitude for MS - well, we'll see.
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Well, you have your opinion, I've written millions of lines of Java code now, and I have my opinion. I don't really hate C#/.NET, there's just no reason to go with them when Java is already there and does the job quite well thank you!
As for Xamarin, we shall see. Xamarin.iOS is sort of a bastard, your application has to be compiled down to static machine code to meet Apple's requirements. So it isn't really any more '.NET' than GNU's Java compiler is, which can also produce executables (and presumably can t
Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
just no reason to go with them when Java is already there and does the job quite well thank you
Wow. Just wow. "I know X, so there's no reason the world needs not-X". All Turing-equivalent languages can do the same job, but Java does that job with about 3x the boilerplate of C# (otherwise they're fairly similar, as Java has finally caught up with every other real language in adding list comprehensions). The lack of proper generics/templates in Java is still a daily pain in my ass, however, as is the simple inability to do List<int>
I understand a preference for the familiar, but when 2 languages are as similar as C# and Java, and one is just better implemented, it seems weird to form an emotional attachment to the other. (Unless this is all really MS-hatred, in which case fine, Win95 killed my pappy, whatever.)
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I prefer C# to Java and have written a few hundred KLOC of both, but quite frankly, unless you have a horrible allergy to boilerplate, or are using cutting edge features, the two *are* similar enough not to warrant moving from one's comfort zone.
99.5% of the code I encounter doesn't use above Java 1.4 or .Net 2.0, so all the nifty language features are pretty much theoretical sizzle on roughly the same steak. And even so, the nifty features often have negative value because they while save the programmer 2
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99.5% of the code I encounter doesn't use above Java 1.4 or .Net 2.0, so all the nifty language features are pretty much theoretical sizzle on roughly the same steak. And even so, the nifty features often have negative value because they while save the programmer 2-3% of his or her time, the maintainers often end up breaking things because they're not all that familiar with the new hotness in language features.
That's a good point.
I do worry that the number of people who can competently handle closures and functional programming is small enough that we're in danger of not being able maintain the whiz-bang code we've written.
Yeah, closures work great with immutable variables (like in many functional languages), but when you start mixing them with mutable objects, where things have all kinds of side effects, the code can get inscrutable very fast.
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"99.5% of the code I encounter doesn't use above Java 1.4 or .Net 2.0, so all the nifty language features are pretty much theoretical sizzle on roughly the same steak. And even so, the nifty features often have negative value because they while save the programmer 2-3% of his or her time, the maintainers often end up breaking things because they're not all that familiar with the new hotness in language features."
Obviously I can't tell you what you've seen but, in comparison, I see LINQ (.NET 3.0 I think) ev
Re:Desktops vs Mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
It depends on your situation but, right now, C# is the only language that you can use to write programs for Windows Desktop (including Win32/.NET/Modern), Web, Mac Desktop, Android, and iOS.
And with all of the OWIN stuff you'll be able to run pristine .NET apps on OS X and Linux.
And you'll be able to host all of this code in one source-controlled Visual Studio project.
It may not be a reason to switch a shop entirely, but there is definitely a unique value-proposition.
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The problem with Java, C#, and every other language is that while the language and it's "core" libraries may be portable, the GUI layer never is. Mono has GTK+ bindings. Windows has Microsoft bindings.
Java deals with five stacks of GUI code -- AWT, Swing, IBM's code (used by Eclipse), the latest GUI code from Oracle (whose name escapes me at the moment), and the GUI for Android. There had been this dream that there would be one set of bindings that adapted to the platform (Swing), but that got screwed
Interesting (Score:3)
I think the problem is that you can make a higher quality product using Qt, but it IS more expensive. Writing C# code, or Java line-of-business stuff is just more cost-effective when the use cases are very specific. I mean I wouldn't write some one-off program to manage some tiddly business process somewhere in C++/Qt because nobody cares if it has to run on a Windows box, and nobody cares if it is fast, small, or even all that reliable. So a vast array of stuff exists in these environments.
Then there's sup
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Remind me again why phones and tablets needed a different programming language?
For iOS, the current main programming language not a different programming language for the one heavily used for OS X desktop applications. (And the language Apple would like to see be a main programming language is also intended both for iOS and OS X.)
For Android, you have an OS with a different history; it uses a different language from the ones heavily used for applications on desktop operating systems, and, as they didn't try to make it into a desktop operating system (not many very open niches in tha
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For Windows Phone/Windows RT/whatever, Microsoft didn't go for a different language from one of the languages for the desktop. Why they went .NET-only, I don't know.
WinRT (which covers both phones and everything else) is not .NET-only. You get a choice of .NET, C++ (with some language extensions, think of it as Microsoft's Obj-C) or HTML5/JS. In theory, it's possible to add similar support to other languages, since it's an ABI that is explicitly designed for cross-language consumption.
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So you are saying developers code in C# with fewer issues than those who program in Java and Javascript?
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You can tell he was a manager, because an actual developer would never think about "customer reach" when choosing a language.
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I think your right in that it's also safe to say that the entire Windows Server ecosystem is going the way of .NET's decline.
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Re:Java, and C#/.NET longevity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Java dwarfs .NET, no matter what the MS shills claim. Whether or not Java is superior to C# is rather besides the point, rather how it was fairly irrelevant how superior any number of languages were to C in the 70s through the 90s (or by some definitions even now). It's simply a matter that Java was for a long time the only major cross platform application ecosystem, so the big enterprise outfits used it, and it's become rather like COBOL.
Microsoft flunkies love to get into these pissing matches with dominant technologies, and try to rejig the question so their products and technologies have the appearances of being on top (just look at how the shills try to act like Surface has any relevance at all).
If I was looking at getting back into coding (which I'm not, I've happily left that world behind), I'd sharpen up my Java skills, as I'm more likely to find sustainable employment there than with whatever Microsoft is trying to fool me into using now.
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The main downside right now with C# is your limitation to running on top of Microsoft Windows/Azure servers stack. Support for running against non-Microsoft technologies (such as PostgreSQL, or under a different O/S) is still a rough edge.
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Hard for silverlight to be "on the decline" - it was always crap. It was crap when it was first unveiled, it stayed crap, it's still crap. Nobody gives a crap about it, cause it's crap. When I see sites using silverlight, I know the site is gonna be crap, too, even more so than flash (which is also mostly crap).
C# in general, though, is amazingly pretty. So is the winforms API, and so is asp.net MVC (not webforms, webforms was super crap). I'm absolutely happy to have a job that's built on C# programming (d
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