[radicalbyte]

You've basically described C#:

Getters, setters fixed? Check. Functional features? Check. Most crappy OO features fixed? Check. Trendy package system inspired by npm/apt-get/gems? Check. Healthy community with libraries replacing frameworks? Check.

I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

[WildUtah]

"You've basically described C#"

Unfortunately the CLR doesn't run on any useful platforms.

[__david__]

Like Linux or Mac? http://www.mono-project.com/

[Crito]

The difference is that I can basically count on any arbitrary java/jvm program running on Linux, but even with Mono I don't get that same level of confidence with random c#/clr.

Now this may be largely a culture thing, with Java programmers creating more cross-platform software and avoiding platform dependent libs just by default, or it may be a technology thing, but to the end user it doesn't really matter.

[socialist_coder]

Sure, you can run command line c# apps just fine but the web hosting solutions for c# web apps are terrible compared to IIS + Windows.

And this is coming from a linux veteran who wrote a C# web app and hosted it in production on Linux for a few months and then had to re-write it in .NET MVC hosted on IIS. I hate Windows servers. Every time I have to RDP into them to change some configs instead of just vi'ing files in /etc I want to shoot myself.

[thomasz]

> Every time I have to RDP into them to change some configs instead of just vi'ing files in /etc I want to shoot myself.

Ugh, maybe you should try out at least one of the several options for remotely managing IIS before you shoot (or embarrass) yourself?

[socialist_coder]

You still have to dig through 20+ screens of possible configuration values, some configs are in web.config in your app, some are in some other machine.config files, etc. The configuration just seems like a mess compared to your standard linux app with everything nicely organized in /etc/<app>

Not to mention the difference of opinions you get when you search for IIS tuning info/documentation. Half the stuff is only valid for older versions of IIS and there doesn't seem to be a lot of good info on the latest version when it comes to tuning.

[radicalbyte]

You need to use the command line configuration tools, it has got a lot better than it used to be (thanks to Azure, I assume). Still nowhere near as consistent/logical as Linux, but it's getting better..

[nobleach]

I love the Mono project, and I follow its progress with great hope. But I've tried to use Mono apps on my Mac (Popcorn Hour configuration things) and they flat out wouldn't run. The gui came up and it just hit a brick wall. I tried it on my Linux laptop... it showed a bit more... and then got stuck. I ran upstairs to a windows machine. Finally it worked. So the write once, run anywhere mantra hasn't exactly hit all Mono developers yet. I think C# is one of the best languages I've ever been blessed to use, but Mono still has a ways to go.

[hk__2]

Yes. Mono is not C#, it’s only a subset.

[gfody]

Please at least learn what Mono is before spouting this tripe.

http://mono-project.com/What_is_Mono

(hint: search for the word "subset" on that page)

[_random_]

Mono is not a language. C# is not a platform. Get a clue - it's useful.

[mattgreenrocks]

The "libraries over frameworks" notion is something I keep noticing in communities that seem to be more engineering-minded than rock-star-ninja-dev-minded. Where do you think this comes from? I think it's a mix of maturity on the part of the community members along with how often the language is used to do things that are harder than CRUD.

[ebiester]

In my case, I'm speaking of a reaction to Spring and Struts. I personally use Grails on my recent projects, which is as close to batteries-included as it gets, but I occasionally have problems with square peg round hole problems, and fighting against a framework is more painful than a library.

The problem with the framework is that we run into a steep hill when we must diverge off the path. A good framework gives a great story. Unit tests, integration tests, consistent layers, convenient and powerful ways to access the database without writing a giant SQL generator (if x return "and b.id = c.id" else return "b.name = "%" + name + "%")...

But then, you hit the use case that the framework didn't consider. And suddenly, you either need to extend the framework (never pleasant) or go outside the framework for one portion, which means building all of the tools from the ground up.

Or, more often, ignore testing, hack in the best way you know how, and hope nothing breaks.

The library approach means that you have to build the integration pieces yourself. This is painful, but it means that when you reach a new use case, it isn't as large a jump to keep going.

Each has tradeoffs. There are times when each is superior. Someone like Bob Martin would suggest that you build your system independent of frameworks and treat the web as a client/compatibility layer, and that you build your system of small composable parts so that the framework/library question is a minor one. (This has its own tradeoff with an abhorrent amount of plumbing code that comes along.)

It all comes back to the problem at hand and how we judge the tradeoffs, like most engineering problems.

[mattgreenrocks]

Do you know of any shops that use Uncle Bob's approach (besides 8th Light, of course)? I don't; I wish I did. I agree that isn't something you'd use every time, but I feel there isn't a whole lot of data out there when people have used it. All I see online are devs whining about the extra work.

I don't know what it is about the web, but it's as if we decided all of software architecture didn't mean anything and threw it out. My theory: it's harder to feel coupling in a dynamic language, thus it's just an academic concern!

[ebiester]

I have plans to try it in a side project. I too am skeptical about the rewards of setting up a CRUD system like that.

It isn't that we've decided that software architecture meant nothing; rather, we settled on one architecture that is Good Enough. The View/Controller/Domain paradigm of Rails works for many projects.

[mattgreenrocks]

It won't be great for CRUD. It's really meant for applications that have a bunch of business logic to them...you know, the interesting apps.

Aside: "good enough" seems to summarize the web as a whole. This is both discouraging and a fact of life.

[ebiester]

You can still have an interesting business logic system that is CRUD at its core. A case management system, as an example, is CRUD at its basis but filled with business logic.

[Iftheshoefits]

I'd say it's exactly about "maturity" not in the emotional sense, but the "breadth and depth of professional experience" sense.

A lot of the 'glamour' in the Bay Area is around web apps that 20-somethings use. As a consequence a lot of the headlines and centers of discussion are going to be around languages, platforms and paradigms that reflect that. And, these days, that would be dynamically typed languages, frameworks or framework-like 'libraries' and fad-following (which is where the "rock-star-ninja" meme comes from). I just try to filter the noise as best I can to glean the useful and interesting bits of articles and comments I read.

[gngeal]

Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.

[Iftheshoefits]

I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings.

This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love, and so they create more jobs for this labor market to fill, which means more people want to fill it (since there are jobs there).

Edit: 1) I would disagree that python is a "lousy" language; 2) To give some perspective regarding where I come from, the vast majority of my experience is with statically typed languages like C, C++ and Java; I prefer them and in my experience they are at least as easy to develop with as any of the dynamic languages that are popular.

[mattgreenrocks]

The commoditization of web devs will occur, it's just a matter of when. Consider it the collateral damage from ever-more-powerful frameworks, a de-emphasis on SOLID-type software architecture, and businesses wanting to pay less for developers.

[Iftheshoefits]

Couldn't agree more. I'd argue it's already well on its way. It seems there has been a resurgence in companies trying to shoehorn every application into a specific development pipeline within the last several years (specifically, the HTML5/JavaScript in-the-browser solution, rather than a more appropriate native solution). It happens every so often in this industry, but lately it seems to have accelerated.

[dragontamer]

I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables.

Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily).

[gngeal]

I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables.

There is very little in terms of "provability" that either C++ or its types give you. Proving anything really interesting (for example, the absence of race conditions in concurrent code) still seems like pretty much an arduous process in languages not explicitly designed for such things.

Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily).

That didn't seem very comprehensible to me, but if you're claiming that in Ruby, you can modify member variables of someone's objects, well, you can't, unless you use reflection as well (not only that, but the access to member variables is object-based, rather than class-based, so you can't access the member variables of an object from any other object, even if they are of the same class, unlike in C++ - so much for the "objects communicate by passing messages" in C++!). More to the point, in C++, you can always cast a pointer into something that makes the raw data accessible. There's enough stuff in C++ for you to blow your whole leg off instead of just shooting yourself into the foot.

[sanderjd]

Alternate theory: "lousy" is a subjective measure, and those languages are popular because in many other peoples' subjective reality, they are not lousy. Just a theory though, by all means, keep thinking that languages are objectively ranked identically to your subjective ranking and anybody using ones at the bottom are just dumb dumbs who are incapable of using the ones at the top.

[Iftheshoefits]

I didn't rank any languages. I made an observation that it is easier for non-technical people to pick up dynamically typed languages and be productive enough for use in many business cases than to pick up statically typed ones. That doesn't mean the dynamically typed ones are "easier" or "worse" than statically typed ones. It doesn't mean people who prefer them or learn programming with them are "dumb dumbs," either. There's a reason I put "lousy" in quotes and didn't flat out agree that they were, in fact, "lousy".

Seems to me that's a chip on your shoulder; not mine.

[agumonkey]

I first saw this in clojure, and thought it came for the builtin immutability of most types. Meaning you can't have order problems with libraries functions, unlike in the mutable world where a framework will shield you a bit.

[edwinnathaniel]

Your package system is inspired by Maven, minus a good build system and other functionalities.

Try building a large C# projects with running unit-tests, integration-tests, packaging, code-coverage, code style baked into it, and a bunch of other plugins for your build systems without pulling your hair.

Your DateTime library ain't there yet sir so you're pretty much at the same situation with Java (although both ecosystems have NODA/JODA lib).

C# is just Java with 10% syntax improvement and -30% to -40% productivity lost when it comes to everything else.

[barrkel]

C# is Java with perhaps 200% syntax improvement. The things I use most often with e.g. Ruby - monadic collection operations like map, select, etc. - is there in the form of Linq, with select, where, etc. A concise, type-inferred lambda expression goes a long, long way.

The .net ecosystem isn't as evolved as Java, for sure. But I don't think maven is a good implementation of a dependency management system either, nor is it particularly good as a build system.

[edwinnathaniel]

I still don't see any C# developers that are 200% more productive than Java developers due to limited infrastructure around the C# ecosystems.

Say anything about Maven but the recent discussion about embedding Bundler to Gem is just one step closer to be like Maven (now if they merged Rake+Gem+Bundler then Maven is). Even if Maven is not "good enough", .NET is thousand miles behind Java when it comes to dependency management and build system.

Google-Guava, as ugly as the syntax is, is good enough for most of us. Java 8 is around the corner so meh.

[mattmanser]

Huh? C#'s had Nuget quite a while ago now.

Why are Java developers always like 5 years behind on C# improvements?

And build systems are something g you set up one afternoon, why are you so fixated on a tiny part of the programming process?

[edwinnathaniel]

... And Nuget is always behind Maven.

... And C# devs always borrow patterns and best practices from the Java ecosystem, so I think it's you guys who are always 5 years behind us.

... If you're using MSBuild or Nant and can set up an adequate build system in one afternoon, either your project is super simple crud, or you're not using enough tools to ensure proper engineering/verification, or you're the top 5-10% people who can bent .net build tools according to your needs, or you're exaggerating.

If you think that we shouldn't sweat over build scripts then that seems to be a hint that you have not dealt with large projects.

[runT1ME]

>monadic collection operations like map, select, etc

There is nothing 'monadic' about select. SelectMany yes, but not Select. That's equivalent to map in other languages.

[tel]

Sure there is! Monads generate liftM, so if you live in a place so bereft of explicit semantics as to call major parts of your standard library "monadic" without specifying which monadic context to which you refer... Then you may as well drag functor and Applicative along with you.

The weakening of the concept is inevitable now that everyone has been taught to not be afraid of it even if they have no clue why it exists.

[olavgg]

Any language today that still requires to mark end of line with a semi colon, has in my opinion outdated syntax. Most people put one statement per line, so why is it required and not optional?

[katbyte]

just guessing but if all statements are terminated with a ; instead of a newline it allows statements to be split up into multiple lines?

[devdas]

What about the counter case of one statement needing more than one line?

[hhw]

1) Line length is arbitrary, and there is no finite limit 2) You can have an escape sequence for a new line

With that said, I disagree that having to mark the end of a statement with a semi-colon is obsolete syntax. Statements and lines should not have to be 1-to-1, even if most code is written as such.

[_random_]

And some languages don't check types for you before running the code and it's almost 2014 now, can you imagine?

[barrkel]

Ruby, Python, even PHP checks the types of values before executing operations on the values.

[keypusher]

That's not true, at least with Python. It uses duck typing, there is no type check before execution. It just runs the code you give it, if you try to call a method that doesn't exist (split on a integer), it will just give an error.

[rbanffy]

Exactly. They check the types. They don't burden the programmer with such tasks.

[_random_]

We build those kind of projects and our team is successful with C#. Perhaps we just know a thing or two about decoupling on all levels. С# comes from the world that brought us Reactive Extensions and TPL. If you call runtime generics, continuations, dynamic typing and value types 10% syntax improvement, then perhaps you should grab a book or two and catch up a bit?

[bad_user]

"Runtime generics" (they are called reified generics btw) is one of the things that keeps the CLR from being a multi-language VM like it was advertised, as at the bytecode level they are very hard to work around. That's one of the reasons for why dynamic languages on the CLR never took off and that's why F# has two generics systems in the same language. I'm much happier with the generics type system provided by Scala - it's more flexible, allows for more type safety (so there are far, far less instances in which one needs to do isInstanceOf checks), you also get reification by receiving TypeTags and Scala can also specialize the implementation for primitives if you want it. You get most of the benefits and more, without butchering the runtime. The easiness with which you can generate bytecode on the JVM has been one of the reason for why the JVM has been preferred by language designers.

Reactive Extensions are very nice. I'm experimenting with the Java port, RxJava. Actually I use RxScala, the Scala interface. However, for me they are of limited utility for my current usecase, because in comparison with Iteratees (a concept coming from Haskell, borrowed by Scala and championed in Play2), Rx Observables are very error prone to issues such as backpressure, whereas Iteratees are safe by design. So on one hand, Iteratees are better for handling streams, such as http requests/responses, handling big files and so on, while Rx Observables are better for publishing events to event listeners. I can see myself using Observables though. Erik Meijer is now contributing to RxJava btw.

The C# continuations are delimited continuations, or partial continuations. They are pretty cool, not arguing about it. But in Scala, the API for the standard Future, is much, much nicer than the API of Tasks in C#, therefore working with Futures directly is more comfortable. Plus, Scala's philosophy is to empower the developer to build on the same "magic" that the compiler uses, therefore instead of introducing LINQ or Async, Scala 2.10 introduced Macros. As a result, LINQ and Async are now possible as libraries. Here's DB LINQ (see the direct embedding tab): http://slick.typesafe.com/ ; and here's Async, which will be included in the standard library, but it's just a library based on macros: https://github.com/scala/async

On Value Types, there's nothing ground-breaking about it. On one hand they are great and it would have been cool to have value types on the JVM. There are proposals to include value types that people experiment with in OpenJDK. On the other hand, the JVM being more restrictive about managing memory, gave birth to the most advanced garbage collectors in mainstream usage. C#/CLR is great when a low overhead is required, such as on mobile devices, but in a server-side context no GC-enabled language can beat the JVM.

On syntax, it's true that Java is an abomination. However this gave birth to multiple languages that are flourishing and you can't say the same thing about .NET ... Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Jython, Groovy and Rhino are examples with flourishing communities and ecosystems. Similar efforts have been happening for the CLR, but they never made it or are moribund, except maybe F#.

I did want to use C# several times, as I view it as a mixed-bag language, as in a language with comfortable high-level features that also has some low-level stuff, which is pretty cool on top of resource constrained devices. And I definitely prefer C# over Java (thank God for Scala and Clojure). Unfortunately the platforms I build upon are mostly Unix and I prefer to build on top of open-source as I'm the kind of developer that likes being in control. And in spite of the best efforts of those people from Xamarin, or the recent moves from Microsoft to open-source some stuff, .NET doesn't really have an open-source community and it's very Windows/Microsoft oriented.

It's a pity because it could have been much more than it currently is. And maybe it will, as I'm seeing some encouraging signs, like Microsoft partnering with Xamarin.

We tend to treat languages like they are football teams. We really need to learn from each other and build on top of each other ideas. Cross-pollination is healthy. Conservatism is not. If we jumped between platforms more often, we wouldn't be separate communities.

[EdwardDiego]

> that's why F# has two generics systems in the same language.

For real? Do you have any reading I can do on this? It sounds... interesting

[kitsune_]

What? We do all those things and have hardly a problem. What ci / build server do you use?

[edwinnathaniel]

In the past, I had the misfortune to work with MSBuild to setup a fairly large .Net project. This was before NuGet exist. NuGet helped a bit these days but integrating FxCop, FxStyle, auto run NUnit, generate the docs, and running code coverage as part of the build is very painful and a manual process from downloading the proper assemblies up to setting up paths and results. Not to mention packaging the whole things up and possibly deploying to local IIS all through the build script.

Preparing dev workspace means to include csproj in your repo which may contain hardcoded paths. Is that portable across to Mono? In Java, all you need is a Maven pom.xml file and the code. Any modern IDE can read pom.xml file and prepare the project consistently cross platforms.

CI server is the easy part.

[gngeal]

And C# "fixes" the deficiencies by heaping features upon features. Already it looks like the MS version of Perl.

[yareally]

Scala with all of its symbolic notation would be more like Perl than C# is. Scala also can run on .net[1].

[1] http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/10299

[saryant]

The Scala .NET backend is being deprecated in 2.11.

[yareally]

Hmm, that's too bad. I haven't found a use case myself for needing it on .net, but I can understand it's probably a pain for TypeSafe to maintain it for both the JVM and the CLR.

[hansjorg]

Except that between the two, only the JVM is truly cross platform, Mono notwithstanding.

[_random_]

Really? How can I use JVM on iOS? Is there a good toolchain for Java -> native iOS?

[bad_user]

Besides RoboVM [1], there are also other solutions, like Codename One [2] that's based on XMLVM [3], or Avian [4] which is a new and very promising lightweight VM that can also compile code to native. And there's also J2ObcC [5] a compiler that's being developed and used by Google to share code between Android and iOS.

You know, Java can be many things, but you can't beat its ecosystem ;-)

[1] http://www.robovm.org/

[2] http://www.codenameone.com/

[3] http://xmlvm.org/overview/

[4] http://oss.readytalk.com/avian/

[5] http://code.google.com/p/j2objc/

[rbanffy]

We were talking about servers. A Java program can run on just about every server platform out there, from puniest Windows Server machines all the way to IBM's largest mainframe and Cray's larger supercomputer.

[chii]

sure there is - RoboVM just came out recently.

In any case, JVM runs on more platforms than any others.

[ebiester]

Has the Mono story gotten better? How feasible is it to develop without thousands of dollars of Microsoft software these days?

[gfody]

Mono has gained serious traction the last few years. I've personally been using it along side .Net and am loving it. You could develop in Windows with the Free/Express versions of Visual Studio etc. and deploy binaries to Linux. You could also use monodevelop (http://monodevelop.com) in Linux or OSX. There are C# plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ as well.

Relevant: http://www.mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono https://servicestack.net/features http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18450/is-mono-ready-for-p...

[bad_user]

> There are C# plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ as well

No, there aren't. And MonoDevelop has gotten better, Xamarin is doing a good job, but it's still a far cry from IntelliJ IDEA. If you want to target Mono, spare yourself the effort and just use Visual Studio.

[gfody]

http://emonic.sourceforge.net/index.html

IntelliJ still seems to be a wishlist item. Surprised there is nothing considering how many other great C# tools JetBrains produce.

[socialist_coder]

For command line apps they're fine. For web apps you still need to host them on Windows + IIS since the Linux+Mono c# web hosting is awful.

[raverbashing]

It has been some time since I tried it

Basically, YMMV.

To develop, sure, it is feasible (I did this, but for a simple webservice), but it may be missing something essential to you.

[moomin]

I'm sorry, but NuGet is a package manager that makes most Maven haters want Maven back...

[mynames]

Could you expand on "crappy OO features"?

[lightblade]

I also like to know more about this C# package system you mentioned.

[Glide]

I would imagine he's talking about NuGet. Unless I've missed something dramatic in the past half year in the .net ecosystem.

[rdmckenzie]

You've also described Clojure...