Opinions of and support for Mono on Ubuntu

[Jerry Haltom]

I can write a web browser in 5 minutes with Mono.

How fast can you write one in C?

http://mysterion.org/~danw/blog/2005/03/steticzilla.html

On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 15:12 -0500, John Richard Moser wrote:
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> Personally, I have mixed feelings.
> 
> I prefer C because:
> 
>  - It's a familiar language, so I understand all concerns with bugs,
> security, etc when I run a program written in C
>  - It's potentially faster
>  - It has immediate access to all system libraries
>  - I consider C/ObjC/C++ to be the most secure option currently, since
> PaX and stack smash protection are easily applied to it; Ubuntu doesn't
> use these currently, of course, though I look to the future with hope. . .
>  - Most of the stuff falls back to C anyway from Java and Mono; gtk# for
> example has to call GTK+, right?
> 
> For OOP, Objective-C is my pick because it's a good language and it's a
> strict superset of C (thus equivalent to C until you start using objects).
> 
> There are advantages to using Mono, either with C, C#, or Java, all of
> which have been known to compile to .NET (MS supporst C and Java; C# is
> the official .NET language):
> 
>  - Portable!  C is also portable, but C# may be portable crossplatform
> without recompiling!  Then again, Java claimed this and it was only ever
> true for very -simple programs. . . (look at limewire's 4 different builds)
>  - It's neat
>  - Abstraction layer between OS and code; though this matters not
> because any security attack can do whatever it wants due to the way JIT
> works (i.e. executing code as native)
> 
> . . . so I see .NET and mono as kind of buzz-crap that offers nothing
> really.  You can say mono is just as fast as C due to JIT, but you'd be
> wrong; Mono is not GCC, mono does not and should not be kludged down
> with the assloads of optimizations that take 5 hours to perform that
> spit out code that's 5-10% faster (basic optimization makes code that's
> 5000% faster; beyond that you gain a little, possibly visibly but not by
> much).
> 
> That being said, Mono is "good enough" performance wise for what it is;
> it's not a bloated slow klunky pile of junk like a GCC -O0 program would
> be, but it can't match with a -O2 program from gcc 4.0 because those
> optimizations would take too damn long.
> 
> 
> Matt Galvin wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > I am interested in starting a project or two for Gnome and would like
> > to hear the opinions of others about Mono, C#, GTK#, etc... Its
> > viability as a platform for developement as well as its support on
> > Ubuntu/Gnome. I know its in the universe and I have played around with
> > it a bit. My reason for asking is, sadly my C has become a little
> > rusty since I have not done any "serious" C dev in a few years. I work
> > a lot with Java (as a professional developer) so the leap to Mono/C#
> > seems to be a very short one for me (plus I already have some basic
> > knowledge of C#). I also know a host of other stuff as I am sure most
> > of you do as well, PERL, PHP, Python, Shell Scripting, the web
> > alphabet soup, XML, and more, etc... So, what are your opinions, is
> > Mono stable enough, do you think it will last long term, etc... or
> > should I just get back into C (which I would like to do at some point
> > anyway).
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
> > 
> > Matt
> > 
> 
> - --
> All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
> Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
> 
>     Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
>     wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
>     new problems waiting out there.
>                                                  -- Eric Steven Raymond
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-- 
Jerry Haltom <wasabi at larvalstage.net>