Re: So are we ever gonna see .NET framework 2.0 on Mac or Linux?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance



For most GUI applications, which is really what the masses (read, sheep)
want, will have portability issues, regardless of the development platform.
There are plenty of software that can run under a multitude of environments
(I once worked for a company where we maintained FORTRAN libraries on over
60 platforms), but this type of software is usually not visual or utilizes
very basic visual functionality. I guess I should have elaborated more on
my point regarding the grander schemes of application portability.

By the way, when you say "entirely reasonably" below, are you referring to
the people's objections or Microsoft's efforts?
--
Christopher A. Reed
"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <skeet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:MPG.1e98ab22b15a378898d01e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Christopher Reed <carttu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When Java first came out, everybody started on this portability bit
again.
The reality is that Java was never completely portable and Sun even went
to
the extreme to prevent Microsoft from making it work better on Windows.

Well, they took MS to court for violating the agreements MS had signed
in terms of not modifying the language. No-one would have objected to
MS just having a better JVM - it's that MS effectively forked Java that
people objected to, and entirely reasonably IMO.

Portability is basically a myth and all code sets will need to be rework
on
each platform you want it on. For Microsoft, their money is invested in
Windows. If Windows is the largest market out there for them, why do
anything else?

Actually, for server side stuff at the very least, Java's portability
works very well - it's far from a myth. My previous job involved
writing a server for WAP phones to read email from existing mail
servers (at the time we first did it, it was very new). We shipped on
Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, Digital Unix and Linux with no conditional
code except in the shell script which launched the servlet engine.
Obviously it needed testing in those environments, but it worked fine
on all of them.

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet@xxxxxxxxx>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too


.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: client -server interaction over XML supporting multiple protocols
    ... > analyzing various models to develop the server. ... The Windows WinInet at just the socket layer is also very ... expected to be different for each platform. ... will the XML size constraints significantly hinder the request ...
    (comp.lang.cpp)
  • Re: Windows Deplyoment Services
    ... of them with windows 2008 server with WDS. ... the third pc for WDS client (x32 platform - old computer 1G nic Card) ... i think is somehting with windows 2008 and x64 computers platform. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.setup)
  • Re: Any Clojure users here?
    ... Each platform has distinct libraries for things like ... want to port it to Windows and give it a native Windows GUI, ... In neither case do you have painless cross-platform portability. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: improve strlen
    ... Windows platform, portable code is of little value when so much code is ... but as I write primarily for current 32 bit Windows, such portability ... Something that makes me laugh is the assumption that assembler is ...
    (comp.lang.asm.x86)
  • Re: What this mean for Borland?
    ... but completely disagree for server side work... ... to create for Windows but I would still like to be able ... capability (i.e. the provision of a bespoke native compiler ... for each target platform) would help counteract those ugly ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)