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Comment by gldev | Hacker News Reader

After so many years microsoft finally presenting their tools in a more moden way. Never been a huge fan of .NET but i can't deny is a great tool hopefully people try it out on more platforms.

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I still can't shake the feeling that their naming is just confusing. I still am not sure what exactly is .NET and what's not.

.Net is 14 years old now - if you don't know what it is by now you're probably not ever going to know. It's a cross platform runtime and a group of programming languages that run on it, just like Java.

The general idea of .NET as a platform is easy to understand. The naming of .NET Core, .NET Framework, ASP.NET, etc. and the difference between them is not.

.NET Framework = the whole shebang, the full runtime including Windows-only bits.

.NET Core = portable subset of .NET Framework. Therefore not entirely compatible with .NET Framework.

ASP.NET Core = portable rewrite of ASP.NET. AFAIK not fully compatible with previous versions.

iirc asp.net core does not contain the web framework part, just the server stuff

My point is that it's just hard to understand what exactly one means when they're writing ".Net". Do they mean the entire framework, a specific library, the CLR, one language, etc. For whatever reason, the name has a very contextual meaning, and people use them interchangeably (".Net Core" is clearly specific though).

Not that they're alone. Adobe did worse with "Flex" since it could refer to the compiler, a framework, and an editor at one point until they decided to make it a bit more standardized.

Java JRE/SE/JDK... It's really not much more confusing than what others use, and as to what you need to install for something.

.Net core apps should be a portable application (portable as in the runtime is compiled in)... Yeah, it is a little confusing, and hopefully removing some of the separate terminology will help. A lot of what has changed, is that you will likely be developing .Net Core (or Xamarin apps) that will target a given platform for running in... Most of the rest should be cross-platform modules that install via nuget (platform/language package manager) and bundled with the application output.

> Java JRE/SE/JDK... It's really not much more confusing than what others use

That's not saying much; "Java" means so many different things it's enough to make your head spin. At least these days it isn't a stock ticker symbol any more.

Java is confusing too so being just like Java doesn't mean it's easy to understand. (Do I need the Java runtime environment, the SDK or the browser extensions to run this code?)

> Java is confusing too

> Do I need the Java runtime environment, the SDK or the browser extensions to run this code?

It's not really confusing.

The Runtime is required to run code. The Source Development Kit (SDK) is for development, and the Browser Extension is for running browser extensions.

That's really only half of it; Java is also a programming language, a bytecode spec, and a binary executable that sometimes points to a JRE and sometimes refers to a JDK, depending on how you installed it. Arguably it's also now being used to refer to the API of the standard library too.

What about Java SE?

The naming is very confusing but it's better than the old name of ASP.NET 5. Source: I had to write about this for a book and it was a challenge to explain it clearly. :)

Yes, that's a thing but at this point imagine just how much more confusion it could create if they change the name.

I went full circle, from a critic how they cloned Java back when my employer had the privilege to beta test .NET as a Microsoft partner, to someone that enjoys delivering solutions on the .NET stack.

For me the sweet spot will be when .NET Native becomes more mature and I can get Delphi/Modula-3 back.

What do you mean by "getting Delphi/Modula-3 back" here? There are some implementations for .NET? or that C# is kinda similar? or something else?

C# was originally designed by Anders Hejlsberg, the C# 1.0 features that weren't taken from Java (J++) were based on Delphi, like Properties.

You also have RAD development on .NET.

Although .NET always had AOT compilation via NGEN, it always depends on the runtime being available at OS level.

With .NET Native it is like things were on PC before JVM took off, with strong typed system languages like Delphi and Modula-3 that compile directly to native code.

I know one needs a bit of imagination to make the comparison, but it is how I like to think about it.

FWIW, yes, there is "Delphi for .NET" (but it's actually much more than that - it can also target JVM and Cocoa):

http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/oxygene/language.as...

i can't speak for the author, but my first thought was the speed. Delphi was almost as easy to develop as Visual Basic, but the result was fast. a native EXE, no big framework-dependencies.

Delphi binaries dont have any dependencies, right?

You can have it both ways, dynamic or static compilation.

If you using COM or third party dlls, which is quite common on Windows, then you need those as well.

Have you tried writing a complex wep app/api with C#? It's an absolute joy to use. Python still has it beat for math and ML libraries, but for getting up a quick web app with robust (and easy) data queries (LINQ) it's pretty unbeatable.

Yes, LINQ is really good. With these news i am willing to go back and try it in some more project.

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