5 ms·

I wouldn't say all other foundations for higher-order languages -- F# runs fantastically on the CLR (or Mono) and doesn't have any of those problems you listed.

cgag 13y ago
F# and the CLR aren't proprietary?
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Mono isn't proprietary.
  - spartango 13y ago
    In my experience Mono is a bit like the OpenJDK was a few years ago: Most things work, but there are a few things that are broken in unavoidable ways. Similarly, the performance isn't terrible, but the optimization is not quite at the same place as the original platform. Xamarin's rapid work suggests that there will be a 'production-ready' CLR for most platforms (they've got it down for iOS, Android, and recently OSX) soon enough.
    - MetaCosm 13y ago
      I feel like Xamarin is in the uncanny valley of language / tooling features. Close enough to working to make the brokenness feel so much worse. If it was more raw, less IDE friendly (ala Go) that would be fine... or was more polished and had a better Xamarin IDE and plugin system, that would be fine as well. Right now, they are stuck in the odd middle, but it is still an amazing value if you are building common code cross platform apps.
  - Fice 13y ago
    Yes, but it can be a patent trap: https://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono https://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_Microsoft.27s_patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_M...
    - jackfoxy 13y ago
      This patent trap commentary is 4 years old. I don't think this is on anyone's radar anymore. Otherwise Xamarin would not even exist.
- jackfoxy 13y ago
  Microsoft has open sourced F# http://fsharp.org/ http://fsharp.org/ and the fsharp.org community is very proactive. As for the CLR, it is an ECMA and ISO standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure
- profquail 13y ago
  F# is licensed under Apache 2.0: https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/LICENSE The Windows-based implementation of the CLR is proprietary, but as other posters have mentioned, it's built around an open, standardized specification (ECMA-335). Xamarin has been making big strides in improving Mono over the past year, and it'll only continue to get better.
Fice 13y ago
I would rather say that the mentioned problems are typical of languages that use their own VM instead of basing on an established platform like JVM or CLR. JVM and CLR are not very different. What would be the reasons to want to avoid JVM, but still consider CLR as an acceptable choice?
- kvb 13y ago
  Well, one of the things that hurts Scala on the JVM is the lack of tail call elimination, which the CLR supports. Reified generics and value types are probably also significant improvements.

cgag 13y ago

F# and the CLR aren't proprietary?

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Mono isn't proprietary.
- spartango 13y ago
  In my experience Mono is a bit like the OpenJDK was a few years ago: Most things work, but there are a few things that are broken in unavoidable ways. Similarly, the performance isn't terrible, but the optimization is not quite at the same place as the original platform. Xamarin's rapid work suggests that there will be a 'production-ready' CLR for most platforms (they've got it down for iOS, Android, and recently OSX) soon enough.
  - MetaCosm 13y ago
    I feel like Xamarin is in the uncanny valley of language / tooling features. Close enough to working to make the brokenness feel so much worse. If it was more raw, less IDE friendly (ala Go) that would be fine... or was more polished and had a better Xamarin IDE and plugin system, that would be fine as well. Right now, they are stuck in the odd middle, but it is still an amazing value if you are building common code cross platform apps.
- Fice 13y ago
  Yes, but it can be a patent trap: https://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono https://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_Microsoft.27s_patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_M...
  - jackfoxy 13y ago
    This patent trap commentary is 4 years old. I don't think this is on anyone's radar anymore. Otherwise Xamarin would not even exist.
jackfoxy 13y ago
Microsoft has open sourced F# http://fsharp.org/ http://fsharp.org/ and the fsharp.org community is very proactive. As for the CLR, it is an ECMA and ISO standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure
profquail 13y ago
F# is licensed under Apache 2.0: https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/LICENSE The Windows-based implementation of the CLR is proprietary, but as other posters have mentioned, it's built around an open, standardized specification (ECMA-335). Xamarin has been making big strides in improving Mono over the past year, and it'll only continue to get better.

Fice 13y ago

I would rather say that the mentioned problems are typical of languages that use their own VM instead of basing on an established platform like JVM or CLR. JVM and CLR are not very different. What would be the reasons to want to avoid JVM, but still consider CLR as an acceptable choice?

kvb 13y ago
Well, one of the things that hurts Scala on the JVM is the lack of tail call elimination, which the CLR supports. Reified generics and value types are probably also significant improvements.