Re: VS2005 and VS 6.0

In article news:<ekBXhq0jGHA.4044@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Tom Serface wrote:
Microsoft is very interesting in "Trustworthy computing" so
they are, of course, pushing .NET as their paradigm towards this end,

NET isn't really much of a solution to untrustworthiness. The fact that
executables run in a sandbox and can check for some error conditions (and
possible engineered exploits) at runtime does help, but it isn't enough.
Other technologies -- correctness proofs and code signing, for example --
could offer far more, and can be applied to native code.

What could make .NET really useful is the ability to deploy a single
application binary across multiple disparate platforms -- how ironic it is,
then, that the only platform on which .NET is fully supported in Windows
intel/AMD platforms (even Pocket MP .NET on ARM is an eunuch). If Windows
for PPC, MIPS, and Alpha were still supported .NET would be far more
useful.

None of this has anything to do with IDE design, though, except insofar as
MS has chosen to target managed code rather than unmanaged with its GUI
designer.

... for what it's worth, I think there are far more people who like
.NET than don't ...

There were always more VB programmers than VC++ programmers, that doesn't
mean that VB is or was in any way as good as VC++ -- just that it was (or
was perceived to be) an easier (or cheaper) way for average programmers to
achieve relatively simple tasks ... and that as much the result of hype and
marketing from Redmond than of any property of either VB or VC++.

There is a class of tasks for which the controlled execution environment of
Java or .NET brings useful benefits ... it's not a very large class of
tasks, and I doubt that most people who code for those environments are
coding tasks in those classes. People like .NET because MS have built an
easy-to-use etch-a-sketch designer that makes it look as though you don't
need to do any coding to use it ... so people who aren't interested in
doing any coding like it.

This sort of tool support could be provided for native C++ development --
it doesn't depend on .NET in any way -- it's just that MS have chosen to
create tools that target the .NET runtime and not to create tools that
target native Win32. This gives people the mistaken impression that ".NET
is easy", when the reality is that ".NET has better tool support".

Personally I find .NET to be a distraction I could well do without. Most of
the code I write would not benefit from running in a software VM -- it
doesn't need a sandbox -- and much of it needs to be portable to
non-Windows platforms. I normally write backends in portable standard C++
and Windows frontends in MFC (though I'm looking at using wxWidgets or Qt,
or maybe something non-C++ like Python for the front-end code in future
projects). Although I regard C# as a better thought-out language than Java
it doesn't have the cross-platform support that Java has, so if/when I need
something that runs in a sandboxed environment I'll use Java rather than
C#.

NET is still very CV-friendly. It's a new technology, and people are still
keen to learn it and evaluate it for themselves, and to be able to claim
experience with it when job-hunting. Java went through this a few years ago
when it was still buoyed up with hype. I don't expect it to last.

Cheers,
Daniel.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Lost in J2ME
    ... >> And as such is not going to be present on all platforms that support a ... SWT is more than "just a library". ... native code with the Java code to provide quick performance. ... support that statement (they claim that Sun could become heavy handed, ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Solaris experimental ver. on WinXP
    ... Would it b of any help or better support for nay ease in programming ... Java newsgroup), in theory the OS you use shouldn't matter, and your Java ... programs should behave similarly under all platforms. ... Any support comes from the tools you use, ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Database advice
    ... own tools don't do this well, and their Java support ... I don't see how this will make Apple port JVMs ... The fact that some old Java APIs get deprecated, doesn't mean they still won't run, just not technically supported for future use. ... That and also the fact that Java runs on all platforms, or should I say the majority of the platforms out there. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Are Unix Domain sockets supported?
    ... supported or supportable on all platforms they are unlikely to appear in Java. ... Unix domain sockets are not in the IP domain. ... It might be more to the point to look for *named-pipe* support in Java since AFAIK most of the platforms of interest support it in one form or another. ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: Which JVM to use under Windows?
    ... be coded to support 1.4, ... Home users have no reason to stay at an old version of Java. ... They just locked their horns with Microsoft and use ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
Loading