.Net, C# and the Open source movement

Question

I'm probably going to take some heat for this question. But I'd like to know how to address this problem. So here goes.

I program (to different levels of competence - admittedly) in various languages. I have dabbled with C#, and it seems quite a nice language (reminds me A LOT of Java and C++). The problem is that I have what can only be described as a pathological distrust of all things from the Redmond company - as a result of experiences too many to enumerate here.

I am a great believer in open source software (GPLd or otherwise) - and am an avid consumer and contributer to many Open Source projects.

My questions are the following:

1. .Net can ostensibly be run on Linux using mono - but is anyone actually using such a setup in production?

2. It seems to me that almost every (half year?) or so, a new version of the language is pushed out - (I don't know whether the new versions are backward compatable). In any event, if you take other languages e.g. C/C++, Python etc, the 'versioning' is far and few between - therefore it provides a more 'stable' environment for the developer. It seems (in my mind at least) that learning/using C# is going to be a never ending learning curve every six months - I am not sure if I have the wherewithal to commit so much to any one particular language.

To summarize, I am trying to balance the pros and cons of learning/using .Net (and C# in particular, which looks like a beautiful language), but if I do, I want to deploy on Apache/Linux (with either mySQL or PostgreSQL backend) - as opposed to IIS/Windows/SQLServer.

Is this a pipe dream (running .Net/C# on Linux), or is someone out there actually using it in production?

Answer 1

While C# does change periodically, it's more along the lines of 18-24 months than 6 months. Moreover, the C# team is very conscientious around making the changes as backward compatible as possible. (There will always be potential breakage when new conversions are introduced etc, but this is mostly a problem with corner cases such as overloading in the inheritance hierarchy.) You don't have to learn everything to do with the latest version... and in the case of C# 4, if you don't do COM and you don't want to use dynamic typing, there's not very much to learn anyway. The enhancements for C# 2 and 3 were much larger, of course - but then they brought much larger benefits too.

As for whether Mono is used in production - the Mono project itself has a list of companies using Mono.

Answer 2

There's a good list to be found at http://mono-project.com/Software and http://mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono one good example "Electronic Arts used it to power Sims3."

New C# versions are pushed out at a quite good pace but the underlying VM specification haven't changed since standardization, backwards compatibiltiy between language versions isn't a problem but you need to target the correct Runtime Version but that's the exact same problem you'd have with Java.

The weakest part of the .Net ecosystem is probably that open source haven't progressed as far as in the Java sphere but things seems to slowly be improving, uptake and contributions will only help that. There's much good stuff comming out of the Alt and Progressive .Net camps in that regard.

Answer 3

If you really want to do web development and host it on linux, .Net / Mono ain't your best choice.

Although ASP.Net seems to run (WebForms that is), ASP.Net MVC (2) does not, at least not flawlessly, so it depends on how well you know Linux to work around bugs that will arise.

Personally, I found it easier to just learn Ruby and use Ruby on Rails than to work around awkward bugs regarding ASP.Net MVC with Mono.

For desktop clients, Mono is a viable alternative.

As for C#: In my opinion it is a nice language too and with the .Net framework it is really productive for windows clients. The changes aren't that bad and you don't have to use every shiny new feature, but you can.

Answer 4

The Wikipedia page for C# shows that your feelings about frequency of new language versions are far from the truth. Certainly the MS way has always been to keep up the flow rate of new technologies - see for example Joel's old essay Fire and Motion - but there's rarely a compelling business reason to keep up with the latest shiny. But the existence of that strategy on MS's part is no reason to keep you from using what is as you say a very nice language, which is independently standard-ised.