4 ms·

I'm a huge fan of Miguel and the rest of the Xamarin crew, and I'd love to see a universal implementation of the CLR take dominance. I think maybe 5 years ago t

I'm a huge fan of Miguel and the rest of the Xamarin crew, and I'd love to see a universal implementation of the CLR take dominance. I think maybe 5 years ago the CLR had a real chance to win in the battle of multi-language runtimes, but at this point I think the war is going to the JVM. (Chalk that up to yet another short-sighted decision by Microsoft.) The problem is that Java (the language) completely dominates the JVM landscape still. I don't see Oracle in the game at all as far as contributing/endorsing something else, and obviously Sun was completely oblivious to anything else until it was too late in the game for them. If you look at the CLR, VB.NET has and F# actually have significant percentages of uptake because they're actually supported by Microsoft. Scala, Clojure, etc.... are just miniscule blips on the radar in comparison.

nkohari 14y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but without a proper implementation outside of Windows, the CLR is currently a place where great languages go to die. Mono is functional, but is basically unsupported (for everything but mobile).
- sultezdukes 14y ago
  the CLR is currently a place where great languages go to die No, F# is completely supported by MS. And that's the problem with the alternative languages on the JVM. Decision makers are wary of anything that isn't officially supported by Oracle. There are other problems with languages like Scala and Clojure that have nothing to do with official support, but that's another story. The mono story is an interesting one. At first people thought it would allow cheap deployments of ASP.NET on Linux servers, but it's really carved out a niche for itself on the linux desktop, in gaming (Unity, Sony's dev kits), and now mobile. What's funny is the JVM is completely irrelevant on mobile, compared to .NET/Mono. Just now Oracle is pulling their heads out of their asses and trying to get the JVM to work on iOS.
  - nkohari 14y ago
    F# is supported by Microsoft on the Windows implementation of the CLR, which is great unless you're not willing to use Windows. You're right that the JVM itself is irrelevant on mobile, but via Android the Java ecosystem still plays a role.
    - sultezdukes 14y ago
      F# runs perfectly fine on Mono. The F# compiler is open source. Microsoft doesn't have to support F# anywhere else. In fact, Xamarin is going to support F# directly in their new IDE.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - martinced 14y ago
    "What's funny is the JVM is completely irrelevant on mobile compare to .NET/Mono" I think you meant "on iOS", not "on mobile". Android has a huge share of the mobile market. And Android is pretty much Java (but maybe you don't consider the Dalvik VM to be a JVM running Java programs). Also you make it sound like somehow .Net/Mono would be huge on iOS. Just to set things straight: most development on iOS is done in Objective-C.
happy_dino 14y ago
> F# actually have significant percentages of uptake because they're actually supported by Microsoft. Scala, Clojure, etc.... are just miniscule blips on the radar in comparison. I think that's pretty much wrong. Despite Microsoft shipping F# support in their main IDE, pretty much no one uses it. Can you name one popular library which switched from C# to F#? Compare that to e. g. Scala: Huge amount of adoption compared to F#, despite _not_ shipping with any IDE by default. One of the most popular Java web frameworks switched from Java to Scala recently. Even the F# “elite” is aware of it and complaining about how Scala has a a lot higher adoption (and a larger ecosystem and more developers, libraries, conferences, user groups, support, ...), so I'm a bit surprised by your statement.
- sultezdukes 14y ago
  Despite Microsoft shipping F# support in their main IDE, pretty much no one uses it Actually, it's fairly popular in the analytics-type world. Can you name one popular library which switched from C# to F#? That doesn't even makes sense. Compare that to e. g. Scala: Huge amount of adoption compared to F#, despite _not_ shipping with any IDE by default. One of the most popular Java web frameworks switched from Java to Scala recently. There hasn't been huge amounts of adoption...not even close. You're confusing blogosphere hype to real numbers. Even the F# “elite” is aware of it and complaining about how Scala has a a lot higher adoption (and a larger ecosystem and more developers, libraries, conferences, user groups, support, ...), so I'm a bit surprised by your statement. Now you're just making things up.
  - happy_dino 14y ago
    > Now you're just making things up. http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/expert-panel-discussion/ac-5762 http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/expert-panel-discussion...
    - sultezdukes 14y ago
      Nice, can you go ahead and watch that 1:20 minute talk again to find out where someone says something that will back you up.

nkohari 14y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but without a proper implementation outside of Windows, the CLR is currently a place where great languages go to die. Mono is functional, but is basically unsupported (for everything but mobile).

sultezdukes 14y ago
the CLR is currently a place where great languages go to die No, F# is completely supported by MS. And that's the problem with the alternative languages on the JVM. Decision makers are wary of anything that isn't officially supported by Oracle. There are other problems with languages like Scala and Clojure that have nothing to do with official support, but that's another story. The mono story is an interesting one. At first people thought it would allow cheap deployments of ASP.NET on Linux servers, but it's really carved out a niche for itself on the linux desktop, in gaming (Unity, Sony's dev kits), and now mobile. What's funny is the JVM is completely irrelevant on mobile, compared to .NET/Mono. Just now Oracle is pulling their heads out of their asses and trying to get the JVM to work on iOS.
- nkohari 14y ago
  F# is supported by Microsoft on the Windows implementation of the CLR, which is great unless you're not willing to use Windows. You're right that the JVM itself is irrelevant on mobile, but via Android the Java ecosystem still plays a role.
  - sultezdukes 14y ago
    F# runs perfectly fine on Mono. The F# compiler is open source. Microsoft doesn't have to support F# anywhere else. In fact, Xamarin is going to support F# directly in their new IDE.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- martinced 14y ago
  "What's funny is the JVM is completely irrelevant on mobile compare to .NET/Mono" I think you meant "on iOS", not "on mobile". Android has a huge share of the mobile market. And Android is pretty much Java (but maybe you don't consider the Dalvik VM to be a JVM running Java programs). Also you make it sound like somehow .Net/Mono would be huge on iOS. Just to set things straight: most development on iOS is done in Objective-C.

happy_dino 14y ago

> F# actually have significant percentages of uptake because they're actually supported by Microsoft. Scala, Clojure, etc.... are just miniscule blips on the radar in comparison. I think that's pretty much wrong. Despite Microsoft shipping F# support in their main IDE, pretty much no one uses it. Can you name one popular library which switched from C# to F#? Compare that to e. g. Scala: Huge amount of adoption compared to F#, despite _not_ shipping with any IDE by default. One of the most popular Java web frameworks switched from Java to Scala recently. Even the F# “elite” is aware of it and complaining about how Scala has a a lot higher adoption (and a larger ecosystem and more developers, libraries, conferences, user groups, support, ...), so I'm a bit surprised by your statement.

sultezdukes 14y ago
Despite Microsoft shipping F# support in their main IDE, pretty much no one uses it Actually, it's fairly popular in the analytics-type world. Can you name one popular library which switched from C# to F#? That doesn't even makes sense. Compare that to e. g. Scala: Huge amount of adoption compared to F#, despite _not_ shipping with any IDE by default. One of the most popular Java web frameworks switched from Java to Scala recently. There hasn't been huge amounts of adoption...not even close. You're confusing blogosphere hype to real numbers. Even the F# “elite” is aware of it and complaining about how Scala has a a lot higher adoption (and a larger ecosystem and more developers, libraries, conferences, user groups, support, ...), so I'm a bit surprised by your statement. Now you're just making things up.
- happy_dino 14y ago
  > Now you're just making things up. http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/expert-panel-discussion/ac-5762 http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/expert-panel-discussion...
  - sultezdukes 14y ago
    Nice, can you go ahead and watch that 1:20 minute talk again to find out where someone says something that will back you up.