Re: If not .Net then what?

On Dec 28, 10:11 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[followups set to comp.programming, where I'm reading this thread]

Terry Olsen said:

<snip>

The only objection to the .NET framework I've heard is from people who
say they don't want some big runtime library installed on their pc's.

Another objection is that it's slow. The first program I moved to .Net ran
around 60 times slower than native - way too slow to be useful.

Loud Rumour, painted full of tongues, speaks.

There could be any number of reasons for this. I'll be jiggered,
Dickie, if you moved an Hello World program.

Did you move a char * based program, and did it convert bytes to
modern characters the hard way?

Was it in C by any chance? You do know, I hope, that many C types are
unacceptable security risks.


A third objection is that it's non-portable. Even if I were of a mind to
run .Net programs under Linux, I couldn't actually do so - at least, not
yet. Mono promises to sort that out... oonnee ddaayy...... but in the
meantime Linux users would rather have something that actually works.

Try as we might, we have to port even the most portable code in order
to give the powers that be some assurance that the code is producing
the same results and is correct. This is called being a professional.

It's an illusion, the idea that the programmer should just sit back
and fiddle with knobs, much less his knob, whilst existing code makes
sure that everything is seamlessly portable, because if you cannot
explain why code ports correctly, the code doesn't port correctly, as
an implication of Dijkstra's point that we can never prove the absence
of bugs...portability being not a technical but a mathematical issue.

You've demonstrated your willingness to transform collegial
discussion, which is what the discussion between Programmer Dude and
myself was becoming in 2003, into the online lynching of a person. I
suggest that this is linked with an inarticulateness and aliteracy
which makes you unable to explain WHY the program you ported worked so
slow.

And, once and for all, the human problem needs to be solved. This is
the overidentification by programmers with platforms that they only
think they know, an overidentification and chauvinism that has led
repeatedly in this newsgroup to cyberbullying and slander, in which
people like Heathfield use as little information as possible to trash
people who threaten their totalitarian control of this ng.

Most people on earth would really like to have a job on which they
could learn, not one platform, but several platforms, and the learning
of the new platform is greatly assisted by open source, which has
forced Microsoft to release full-function Express platforms in which
you, my dear Richard, could have done due diligence, for a start
figuring out why the devil your code was so fragile as to manifest
such chaotic behavior.

Don't be so afraid to discuss the code, Dickie. Other people here are
not as ready as you to infer from one line of code your global
incompetence. Other people here are COLLEGIAL and they know what
SOLIDARITY means.

The poor workman blames his tools.


<snip>

I use VB not because i'm stupid, but because I'm lazy.

Being even lazier than you, I use C++ Builder for those rare occasions when
I need to write a Windows program. Because I'm so lazy, though, I prefer
to use Linux, where almost everything is so much easier to do. (In the
interests of balance and fairness, I will of course concede that there are
some things that it's easier to do in Windows. But industrial-strength
programming isn't one of them.)

I like that I can
whip out a windows form in a few seconds and use the various built-in
functions and classes to do the work that I want done. I've been known to
get a quick app done in 15 minutes when someone says "I need a utility to
do this...".

What took you? My personal record for responding to such a request is 30

We are all familiar, Richard, with the snide way in which you question
people's qualifications by speaking in managementese. Knock it off.

seconds (including compilation) for the first version, and another 60
seconds when the user suddenly decided to require some extra features.
Builder rocks like that. I recommend it to you - and it doesn't need that
silly .Net framework either.

Gee, hundreds of good, decent, hardworking, God-fearing worked 24/7 to
produce .Net and you sit there and call it silly.


Using a non-ide language like gcc or other command-line
compilers doesn't make any sense to me. It's a time waster.

I don't like wasting my time, which is why I use the best tool for the job..
Sometimes, that's an IDE tool like C++ Builder. But sometimes it's a
command-line tool. If you think command line compilers are a waste of
time, that suggests that you haven't much experience of life outside the
world of pointy-clicky.

It's schizophrenic, not to say logically contradictory, to condemn a
man simultaneously because he doesn't use the fastest development
tool, which would be pointy-clicky, and then trash him for not using
command line compilers.



<snip>

So it's up to you. Use whatever you're comfortable with and don't listen
to people who have pre-conceived ideas about your language of choice.

There, at least, I can agree with you.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

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