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I don't think I agree with your analysis. C# was originally designed to look a lot more like Java than Java ever looked like C, but it hasn't been hampered by t

I don't think I agree with your analysis. C# was originally designed to look a lot more like Java than Java ever looked like C, but it hasn't been hampered by that and has evolved to be a much more advanced language than Java has. It also doesn't have the over-engineering culture that Java has (aside from a number of "Enterprise-Class" add-on libraries Microsoft has tried to push out.) The same could be said about Ruby and it's relationship to Perl and Python. It has cultural roots in those languages, but is often regarded to be better rather than worse. (As a die-hard Perl developer I disagree, but I don't hold a grudge.) All three are also considered to be C-like languages too, and they don't suffer the problems Java has. One could argue that Java's problem was that it was designed for programming VCRs, DVD players, and Cable-TV boxes, and similar equipment, but the got stretched and pulled into environments it just wasn't ready for. That, plus Sun's hyper-aggressive marketing machine to turn Java into the language-for-everything, created the beast that it has become. My personal view is that Sun turned Java into a programming language for charge-by-the-hour consultants. The culture of over-engineering exists because it takes a lot more time to design software that way, more time and larger teams to implement software that way, and specialized hard-to-transfer knowledge to maintain that kind of software. This all benefits the consultants and hurts the companies paying for the software to be built, which only makes sense if Sun was intentionally pushing Java that way.

jlgreco 13y ago
I would say that all of those languages, while "officially" C-like (as Go is), all stray much further from C than Java or C++ (as Go has). Particularly Perl, Python, and Ruby, which are dynamically typed which singlehandedly eliminates neutralizes a great deal of "C's baggage". I wouldn't describe C# as a language that I like, but I think it too has benifited from breaking the mold of C more than Java did (though I attribute most of it's superiority to its designers simply making better decisions in several places). Named and optional arguments stand out in my mind as ways C# did something that had no precedence in C, while Java still has not. (There is that double squiggly bracket trick, but you have to admit that is pretty shoddy).

jlgreco 13y ago

I would say that all of those languages, while "officially" C-like (as Go is), all stray much further from C than Java or C++ (as Go has). Particularly Perl, Python, and Ruby, which are dynamically typed which singlehandedly eliminates neutralizes a great deal of "C's baggage". I wouldn't describe C# as a language that I like, but I think it too has benifited from breaking the mold of C more than Java did (though I attribute most of it's superiority to its designers simply making better decisions in several places). Named and optional arguments stand out in my mind as ways C# did something that had no precedence in C, while Java still has not. (There is that double squiggly bracket trick, but you have to admit that is pretty shoddy).