Chambers wrote:
> This is similar to Java, although it is 
> not platform independent (there is a platform independent open source 
> version, called Mono, which is able to execute many .Net applications).

Actually, the CIL is indeed platform independent. What isn't is a large 
number of windowing libraries and a few others that are per-OS, primarily 
because you *can* get to some low-level stuff. There's virtually nothing in 
the definition of the libraries or language that would be difficult (as 
opposed to tedious) to implement on other OSes.  Of course, if you do things 
like inspect the Windows message pump, or you query the X server's WM 
properties, you're going to have unportable code. A Windows service is going 
to have different wrappers than a Linux service, because the two have 
fundamentally different operational mechanisms. *That* is where the 
non-portability bits come from.  Well, that and that it hasn't been ported 
too much yet.

> There are other technologies and features, of course, mostly aimed at 
> interoperability of various system components (for instance, LINQ, which 
> allows SQL-type queries from languages such as C# and VB).

There's also a tremendous focus on being able to use different parts of the 
systems from different vendors. The whole bit of managing "components" is 
that. So if you don't want to write it and it doesn't come with, chances are 
good you can buy it already built for you.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message