Dot Net Rocks
Apart from the amorphous name, I find the .NET Framework a powerful paradigm in computing. It addresses many of the challenges programmers have faced. It does so in a way that is not all new, like say, the BeOS, created by the now-bankrupt Be Corporation. Instead, it builds on well-understood design patterns.The pedigree of the designers is respected. Anders Hejlsberg was the creator of Turbo Pascal. He led the team that created the C# Programming language.
The power of the .NET framework comes from the fact that it takes away the Java system's focus on programming in a single language. Instead, any language, potentially even Java, can use the framework.
There are a growing number of third-party languages that run comfortably on .NET, and growing is not an euphemism here. At last count, about 70 languages ran on the .NET framework.
Microsoft has taken another key step with .NET - there are upcoming open-source implementations of .NET - The Mono project being the most well-known. While, the corporate concerns with open-source software still hold good, this is a positive trend for a company, whose boss once told a Microsoftie that recommended open sourcing Windows, to join the Peace Corps.
The well-written, though flawed essay by Neal Stephenson, "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" comes to mind here. In this essay, the author posits that the cosmos is likely a kind of Finite Automaton or a SimCity-variant, being generated by variant command lines by a proto-hacker. He riffs on the similarities between Apple & Microsoft, and recommends Linux over them, an inductive leap, that one finds a flaw. More to the point, though, he recommends that Microsoft, liberate, both itself and Windows, by making it open-source.
The dotnet community has had to wait about two years for the second version of the .NET framework (Beta here). This cycle time would likely have been reduced by an open-source approach.
posted by Frater P.A. @ 5:49 PM
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