Microsoft's C# (Sharp) & .NET -- A Heads Up

[Neil Hodgson]

> Watching the reactions of the dyed-in-the-wool-MS-hating-academics was
> almost the most interesting part of this project.  Suffice it to say they
> started the project with their "Tux" t-shirts being worn proudly every
> (single, smelly :-) day, but by the time the PDC came around they were
> first in the queue for their .NET tshirts ;-)

   This is a great move for Microsoft. While a large number of languages
have been implemented on the JVM, Sun has not been interested in making the
Java world friendlier to other languages. I don't think they have accepted
one extra byte code to help another language and some implementors have
argued that very minor changes could lead to much better implementations for
their language.

   It's not all happiness though. There has been mention of a Common Lisp
group that bailed because of concerns with the .NET process. And several
languages that would be good candidates for this environment such as Ruby
appear ignored. Microsoft is, for now, listening very hard so now is the
time for ensuring that .NET will be a good environment for languages and
language features that you care about.

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   Neil