c#

[gish]

Any one here into developing in C#??

:)

G

[kmj]

I've heard good things about it (from someone who makes money writing books about M$ technology).

[Strike]

If/when a C# compiler (or CLR or whatever it is) for Linux comes out, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

[sans-hubris]

Originally posted by Strike
If/when a C# compiler (or CLR or whatever it is) for Linux comes out, I'd be happy to give it a shot.
The Linux compiler, Mono (http://www.go-mono.com), is finished, it's the class libraries that are not finished. In fact, you don't need any of Microsoft's C# stuff to just compile C# under Linux (the compiler can compile itself.)

One of my friends, who is actually very anti-Microsoft, has been raving to me about all the goodness of C# and the potentiality of Mono. It's rubbed off on me, and now I want to get into it sometime.

[GnuVince]

I do not find C# to be that interesting anymore. I've looked briefly at a book of one of my teacher, and it seems that it's Java with different module and function names.

[gish]

Originally posted by sans-hubris

The Linux compiler, Mono (http://www.go-mono.com), is finished, it's the class libraries that are not finished. In fact, you don't need any of Microsoft's C# stuff to just compile C# under Linux (the compiler can compile itself.)

One of my friends, who is actually very anti-Microsoft, has been raving to me about all the goodness of C# and the potentiality of Mono. It's rubbed off on me, and now I want to get into it sometime.

You are correct, Microsoft wanted this (C#) to be a cross platform...but I was unaware of any existing comilors for it yet..that is very interesting.....good to know...it is actually a very interesting language.....I am excited about it......!!

G

[Strike]

sans-hubris: the C# compiler for mono still isn't quite complete (http://www.go-mono.com/status.html), as well as all of the rest of the pieces of it

[sedarious]

So, whats supose to be so great about C#? What advantages does it have over C++?

[Strike]

Originally posted by sedarious
So, whats supose to be so great about C#? What advantages does it have over C++? Well, it's not so much what is great about C# other than the fact that it is a part of the .NET platform. If you think the advantages offered by the .NET platform are good, then it would behoove you to use C#.

[ThurberMingus]

I began light programming in C# about a month ago, just trying to absorb it (mainly, I am getting to know the .NET FCL). I think it is worthwhile to get to know it, as much as people may not like Microsoft, they are putting all of their $$$ behind .NET and C# is it's lingua franca. Besides, did you know that C# and I believe most of the .NET FCL was submitted to ECMA for standardization?

Ben Albahari, author of a couple of O'Reilly books on the subject, has written this article comparing Java & C#:

http://genamics.com/developer/csharp_comparative.htm

Here is his conclusion, for those that want a teaser on the article:

"I hope this has given you a feel for where C# stands in relation to Java and C++. Overall, I believe C# provides greater expressiveness and is more suited to writing performance-critical code than Java, while sharing Java's elegance and simplicity, which makes both much more appealing than C++."

[gish]

yeah I am enjoying my "Learn" of C#

G

[Strike]

Just a question for ThurberMingus since he seems to know a bit about C# - why on earth did MS choose ECMA as the body to choose their language for standardization approval? No other programming language has ever been standardized by them, it's usually data transfer algorithms for tapes if you look at their list of standards. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, or an MS basher (though I'm not too fond of them, admittedly), but it seems to me like the following scenario is possible - they are sick of getting bad press for not opening up their standards, so they picked an organization that would allow them to declare standards the way they want to. I could totally be off base, but I gotta wonder what the ECMA has to do with any thing in the programming language world. Why not get it approved with ANSI and/or ISO, for example?

[ThurberMingus]

Sure. Good question, and although I don't have a direct answer to the question, "Why did they standardize C# through ECMA?" I do have some info that may help you feel more comfortable with it. You will see your precious ISO mentioned . . . ;-)

"On December 13, 2001, the ECMA General Assembly ratified the C# and common language infrastructure (CLI) specifications into international standards . . . In addition, ECMA approved the fast-track motion of these specifications to ISO. This is a huge step toward the Microsoft .NET Framework being widely accepted by the industry."

"The following organizations have participated in the work of ECMA [in standardizing C#]: Fujitsu Software, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, International Business Machines, ISE, Microsoft Corporation, Monash University, Netscape, OpenWave, Plum Hall, Sun Microsystems"

By the way, in case you missed what should have been found everywhere you looked for ECMA-related info, ECMAScript is a standard specifying the base requirements for what you know as JavaScript. I believe it serves a purpose similar to POSIX standards: JavaScript and JScript are ECMA comliant as long as they meet the requirements of the ECMA spec, and of course they can then contain other special proprietary features. Does that make sense? This begs the question, why did JavaScript become standardized by ECMA? Who knows? I don't, and I don't care at this point because I don't see how it matters.

I hope I was able to shed some light on this for you. Let me know if you have any other questions, I will try to answer as best I can, though all I did to get this info was use Google, I didn't come up with this from having read it before.

(The above quotes can be found at: http://cedar.intel.com/cgi-bin/ids.dll/content/content.jsp?cntKey=Legacy::ie_index_4182&cntType=IDS_EDITORIAL and http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/ and other mirrors)

[gHauklund]

I'm attemping to learn it now. I am moving up from several years of Visual Basic Programming and was starting to learn C++. I became convinced that my time was better suited learning C# instead.

[CheeseLick]

I recently started learning C#, as well. It's insanely easy, and especially so if you already know C++. While bored recently, I whipped up a program that connects to WMI (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnw2k/html/wmioverview.asp) and outputs all data from a given class and namespace. It only took a couple of hours before it was working flawlessly.

The language does have drawbacks, though. I, for one, enjoy juggling pointers. It makes me feel powerful. C# has made all pointers safe. People tell me it's a good thing, but I quietly disagree.

[ThurberMingus]

C# does not need the use of pointers, but as I recall, you can write what they term 'unmanaged code,' which allows you to play with pointers if you so desire. Am I remembering correctly?

[LonelyKing]

Yeah, you're remembering correctly. If you want to use pointers in C#, they HAVE to be in an unsafe code section. They say that the only reason they included it was to make portability of old C/C++ code easier. But yeah... the language itself eliminates the need for pointers. Whether that's a good or a bad thing... I guess it, for the most part, is up to personal preference.