[Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)
- From: vkanakala@xxxxxxxxx (Vamsee Kanakala)
- Date: Mon Jul 19 09:27:08 2010
On Monday 19 July 2010 08:17 AM, openbala wrote:
Isn't that how most of the opensource projects begin? (I might be on a
limbo here, but I agree that there are first class ideas in oss
projects also)
It might have been the case before, but increasingly, at least in the
area that I'm involved in (web development) the rate of innovation in
the open source projects (especially web servers/frameworks) is really
out-stripping the proprietary variants. I'm optimistic enough to hope
that it will spread to other parts of the technology ecosystem. What I'm
trying to say is, if somebody starts tries to start something like Mono
now, they will be rightly looked at as behind the times. There's simply
no need for that kind of paranoia now. Innovation and FOSS go together
very well, and it's been proven plenty of times now.
I'm not an authority on deciding which technology to use in business.
Probably, if I have my own company I may not choose the .Net stack. My
views were only from a developer's perspective of some of the features
given by a language. Like a kid standing in front of a candy shop. Why
should being a opensource developer stop one from learning the stack,
after all we are developers in first place.
Of course you're free to choose what you want to learn. But if you want
it to grow into something of a career, even as a developer you have to
be careful what you choose. I'm just pointing out that .Net might have a
lot of goodies you are excited about, but perhaps your time is better
spent looking at alternatives in the FOSS world where the pace of
innovation is far more rapid, and longevity of your skillsets depends
solely on the language's merits and adoption, not on a company's ability
to control markets, which might or might not be sustainable in the long run.
With people like Eric Meijer and Don Syme in the team - .Net stack has
got some remarkable features such as LINQ, lambda expressions,
covariants& contravariants, type inference which the Java world is
still dreaming out. Porting F# as a first class language on .net
platform is also a boost to the functional programming community. My
thoughts were only to bring these features to Linux.
Sounds like fun - but are you absolutely sure that there are no FOSS
alternatives available that lets you play with those language features?
There are plenty of functional languages that are implementing cutting
edge PL research (I'm a bit of a PL geek myself, and I still remember
the long rants and vain attempts of Jon Harrop trying to convince
comp.lang.lisp audience how F# is better than Common Lisp, but I doubt
if he won any real converts, except ending up alienating the whole of
c.l.l being termed a troll :). I do remember hearing that Qi has some of
those features, but you have to do your own research in that aspect. All
I'm trying to point out is, your time is probably more worthwhile and
might avoid nasty surprises down the road if you stay clear of languages
promoted by companies with a history as that of Microsoft.
Apple is using 3.3.1 selectively. There are still a lot of
cross-compiled code in app store that was built using mono and other
similar tools. But I agree with you on this that we can't develop
applications on monotouch and just pray that Apple will somehow make
it available in app store.
The whole point of 3.3.1 is to be able to use it selectively, I think
:). Granted that I lost most of my respect for Apple for quite some
time, but you only have to read some of the horror stories of indie
developers who have invested so much time and money into writing an
iPhone app, only to be yanked out of App Store because it's either
conflicts with Apple's world-view or more narrowly, their revenue
stream. Do you really want to be part of that kind of paranoid
environment where so much rides on whether or not Apple (or some other
3rd party) thinks highly of your app? Finally, as a developer, that's a
call you have to make. I'm guessing for most of us in this forum, taking
permission from the likes of Apple for doing what we love to do is
simply not an option :)
Vamsee.
Other related posts:
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- openbala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Rahul Sundaram
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- narendra sisodiya
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- openbala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- narendra sisodiya
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Rahul Sundaram
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- சிவகுமார் மா
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Vamsee Kanakala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Rahul Sundaram
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Vamsee Kanakala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- openbala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34) - Vamsee Kanakala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Kenneth Gonsalves
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Vamsee Kanakala
- » [Ilugc] [OT]RMS on Mono, DotGNU (from foss news-34)- Kenneth Gonsalves