4 ms·

What does that generic MS critique even mean? That it's controlled by Microsoft? The entire thing is open source: "The .NET Micro Framework 4.1 source is avail

What does that generic MS critique even mean? That it's controlled by Microsoft? The entire thing is open source: "The .NET Micro Framework 4.1 source is available, it's Open Source under the Apache 2.0 License. (Ya, the new Microsoft is freaking me out also. There's a lot of source that's quietly making its way out under increasingly liberal licenses.)" I would say it's damn awesome, not just nice. You can get a controller for $34.95 and program it in a modern user friendly IDE. You can even step through code in the debugger. It makes hardware tinkering ridiculously accessible to a lot of people. If I had a kid I would love to be building little projects with this. Lego mindstorms is $300 I think.

MartinCron 16y ago
To me, "Microsoft-centric" means that I get to use C#, Visual Studio, nUnit and ReSharper to write code that runs on these tiny little hardware devices. Sign me the hell up.
jarek 16y ago
To be fair, and I am a pretty big fan of VS, the Arduino boards cost about the same or slightly more, and their provided IDE is not a lot worse than VS for basic projects.
- jordan0day 16y ago
  I think the advantage here may not be IDE (although VS is a pretty nice IDE) but language. If you're much more comfortable writing C#, then Netduino could be much more productive for you. Obviously if it were a serious hobby, you'd probably invest the time to become better at C++, I would imagine. Still, a little variety never hurt anyone.
rbanffy 16y ago
> What does that generic MS critique even mean? Probably that it requires Windows in order to use the toolset. That's a no-no for me. I can run Windows on VMs, but I just don't want to and Arduino provides me enough without having to run Windows in any case. It may also refer to the possibility Microsoft decides to sue you for patent infringement (their promise only covers the parts that are ECMA standards) if you ever build a successful product with it.
- jordan0day 16y ago
  AFAIK the Netduino guys are looking at (already are?) supporting MonoDevelop, so in that case you could do all your development on Linux or OS X. Additionally, this is specifically around the .NET Micro framework, which has been release by MS under the Apache 2.0 license. IANAL, but that certainly makes me think they're not planning on suing anyone who uses it.

MartinCron 16y ago

To me, "Microsoft-centric" means that I get to use C#, Visual Studio, nUnit and ReSharper to write code that runs on these tiny little hardware devices. Sign me the hell up.

jarek 16y ago

To be fair, and I am a pretty big fan of VS, the Arduino boards cost about the same or slightly more, and their provided IDE is not a lot worse than VS for basic projects.

jordan0day 16y ago
I think the advantage here may not be IDE (although VS is a pretty nice IDE) but language. If you're much more comfortable writing C#, then Netduino could be much more productive for you. Obviously if it were a serious hobby, you'd probably invest the time to become better at C++, I would imagine. Still, a little variety never hurt anyone.

rbanffy 16y ago

> What does that generic MS critique even mean? Probably that it requires Windows in order to use the toolset. That's a no-no for me. I can run Windows on VMs, but I just don't want to and Arduino provides me enough without having to run Windows in any case. It may also refer to the possibility Microsoft decides to sue you for patent infringement (their promise only covers the parts that are ECMA standards) if you ever build a successful product with it.

jordan0day 16y ago
AFAIK the Netduino guys are looking at (already are?) supporting MonoDevelop, so in that case you could do all your development on Linux or OS X. Additionally, this is specifically around the .NET Micro framework, which has been release by MS under the Apache 2.0 license. IANAL, but that certainly makes me think they're not planning on suing anyone who uses it.