I'm interested in using it, I love .NET as a platform, I just have this vague sense of worry that I can't quite rationalize. Mostly based on Microsoft's past performance with cross-platform efforts.
Thoughts? Is my gut feeling right or wrong?
- C# is standardized (albeit an older version that the current one) - C#/.NET has more permissive licenses (MIT & Apache vs GPL) - C#/.NET is now developed in public, on GitHub - Microsoft has promised not to sue for patent infringement on .NET
I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV, but it looks like even if Microsoft changes it's mind, it can't take it back. The worst it could do would be abandon support. That would be a huge hit, but something the community could recover from.
Meanwhile, you have Java with Oracle shutting down security fixes for Java 7, unless you get a long-term support contract. Which would you rather deal with?
I had some correspondence with RMS back in November right after CoreCLR was announced, and he doesn't seem to agree. All he said was that MS's non-standard/custom patent grant isn't sufficient and that http://endsoftpatents.org/2014/11/ms-net/ is correct.
While I think http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono was cogent and made a convincing argument at the time, and there may even be problem with the new patent grant, the endsoftpatents.org analysis just seems like a poor one.
I also pointed out that the .NET Micro Framework wasn't under a custom patent promise, but instead has been available under Apache 2.0 for years. It seems that even if let's say the worse case scenario is true, and there is a loophole in the patent promise, and it was put in to facilitate nefarious plans on MS's behalf, then the free software community could render even such deliberate plans as ineffective. The key move would be to continuously and aggressively hedge on alternatives and to make it well known that's what's going on. The community could aim for aggressive portability to other languages/runtimes with the use of a tool to do mechanical translation. If MS (or one of its affiliates) tries anything shifty, the community flips a switch and for compatibility relies on an NETMF-based runtime (still being available under Apache 2.0 and all) and otherwise begins living entirely in Vala land, with MS having proven they don't want to play ball.
It's like Mutually Assured Destruction, except for one side's wholesale elimination of their risk of being destroyed.
I've recently decided to switch to .NET for everything. Mainly because I really like F#, and I've been using C# for a side project in Unity, but also because an open source CoreCLR makes me worry a lot less about vendor lock in.
I get and appreciate the sentiment on "if Microsoft abandoned it tomorrow". Just clarifying that this risk is _very_ far from reality.
It's also really interesting to look at how Microsoft is approaching C#/Roslyn. One aspect of that is the C# 7 effort, which has an ambitious scope and has a great deal of open/public interaction. Check it out: https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/2136
For me, the web development was too magic, way more so than RoR. I got an acquaintance that only do .Net. And he harps about how .Net got Razor and data base represented as object unlike open source. When I pointed out that Razor was just a template engine and that database thing is just ORM which many other MVC frameworks have he just didn't get it. He didn't get it's a template engine nor does he understand that it's an ORM. Magic! I also tried some .Net dev, and it's very magic in term of abstraction. The VisualStudio IDE is amazing and C# seems like a much better language than Java. But the ecosystem isn't as rich, Apache such an awesome organization but Oracle is very pushy.
The downsize for me is big, ecosystem. Most of the open source projects play very well together, C# is a newbie, I rather wait for it to mature within the open source space (including books and tutorials).
That's too bad, because there are tons of sharp .NET devs who despise the concept of "magic" (and no, ORMs are not magic, and Entity Framework is fantastic) and who understand the abstractions that .NET offers. I would hesitate to write off all .NET enthusiasts as clueless less-than-hackers.
(disclaimer: Microsoft employee, nothing to do with .NET though)
XNA is the example I always use. You can use XNA and make games without understanding anything about the graphics card but you can also dig in and write your own shaders and basically go however deep you want to/need to.
There are some things in .NET that do seem kinda magic, and razor is one of them. Not because it's a templating engine but just in how lightweight it is and how surprisingly decent intellisense can be with it. Most templating engines feel so verbose and ugly after working with razor.
Entity Framework is also a really nice ORM for most small-mid sized projects... If you're really stuck on using a strongly-typed environment I will say that C# is one of the better ones and would choose it any day over Java (and a lot of others). My issue with many .Net and Java projects is that a lot of "enterprise" design patterns are used when they are more in the way than helpful. Abstractions are used which only improves testing or portability, but neither testing or portability are used. But this is more of a design choice from the developers than the languages/platform used.
I also disagree with your reference to .Net/C# not having a large ecosystem... There are a lot of tools for C# out there, most open-source and easily available via Nuget. Not to mention that Stack Overflow has authoritative answers to almost anything you could need with .Net or C# and has MS employees as regulars to offer support.
This is from someone who doesn't even write much C# any longer (still supporting two legacy apps in C#), and does most of his development being deployed to Linux servers.
A few people have concerns that the patent grant isn't as broad as it should be.
For me it would mostly be an ecosystem thing. I use Typescript because it drops right into the pipeline I was already using, but switching VMs is a big ask. How good is Thrift for .NET?
> just using code that implemented it in the obvious/efficient way could land you in legal hot water
Apache 2.0, GPLv3, and MPL2 are no different; you can't take Covered Code that company X is distributing but that doesn't infringe their patent A, then modify it to make use of methods/techniques that do infringe patent A, and expect to be indemnified from litigation. And each of these other "sufficiently-free" licenses explicitly says so.
Having said all that, I do wish they would have expressly used Apache 2.0 instead, just for good measure and to avoid the casted aspersions.
It's "safe" to use, and will be for the future but is not on par with windows yet.