Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pjmlp 1737 days ago
What makes an NGEN compiled WinForms .NET application not native on Windows?

Curious to find out, how those people distinguish it from an MFC/ATL or an Win32 one.

1 comments

It's not just one thing. Just like what distinguishes a human from a chimpanzee isn't just 1 thing.

But see for example https://stackoverflow.com/a/855774

If you still don't like the terminology though, I'm not going to keep arguing. I didn't coin the term. You should go ask Microsoft why they didn't call C# native when NGen was already there. I'm just saying that terminology is already established and you're confusing people by using it differently.

That is one possible interpretation of the term, yes Microsoft does use native/managed to distinguish between environments with GC runtime and those without.

Which isn't what users talk about when arguing about native apps, they don't even know what a GC is.

> Which isn't what users talk about when arguing about native apps, they don't even know what a GC is.

Because I'm sure if you went and asked the vast majority of "users" what a "native app" is, you'd get a coherent answer instead of a blank stare.

Let's lay this matter to rest. You don't like the definition, I get it. It's fine.