Fedora meeting Mono Half-Way

[Paul A Houle]

Alan Cox wrote:
> Umm actually thats a very dangerous assumption. If the implementation in
> mono is wrong then every app in mono has the hole. We've seen this occur
> historically in other 'safe' languages. Also if there are bugs in libraries
> it uses they end up everywhere
>
>   
    Yeah,  but if you find a bug in mono,  java,  python or some other 
runtime you can patch it -- it's much less work than auditing the use of 
strings and pointers in each applications.

    As for library bugs,  that's an area where Java does better than 
C#.  Half of it is that JNI is painful enough that people don't want to 
use it,  the other half is that "100% Pure Java" has encouraged a kind 
of xenophobia -- rather than import thousands of libraries that aren't 
thread-safe,  the culture of Java is such that people have started in a 
greenfield where,  at the least,  people were warned that their 
applications would live in a threaded environment.

    C# was designed to make it easy to use legacy libraries.  Pandering 
to lazy programmers is the Microsoft Way.  C# is less (security,  
pointer goofs,  memory leaks,  thread) safe than Java as a result.
> If you don't use the tools properly you don't get good results. Thats
> nothing to do with mono
    Yeah,  but some tools are hard to use properly.  People have been 
writing C for 30 years,  and most still don't get it right.

    A lot of programmers aren't happy with the options available for 
writing Gnome apps,  and this is one reason why some respected Gnomers 
have gone down the mono path.

    I totally agree that mono is in a legal minefield,  and I respect 
the decision to not carry it.    In a lot of ways,  Red Hat's hands are 
tied.

    Maybe we need really good Gnome bindings that work for Java/gcj...

    I used to be skeptical about Java on the desktop,  but Azureus has 
made me a believer...  It "just works" on Windows,  Linux and Mac OS X.  
Speed,  reliability and features compare favorably with native apps.

    Every so often I think about learning how to program desktop apps,  
but now that we've got AJAX and the Canvas element,  I can do the  
things I want to do with web apps.  The desktop app situation on Unix 
(never mind cross-platform) is a real mess.  I regularly end up spending 
hours tracking down and installing libraries when I want to install a 
GUI app on Solaris or older Red Hat system.  If I target the web 
platform,  my app works on all the computers I use without the fuss...