JetBrains announces Project Rider, a cross-platform IDE for C# JetBrains has announced Project Rider, a cross-platform IDE for C# that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, via a session at the NDC developer conference in London. These are interesting times for Windows developers, with the PC in decline and Microsoft's mobile platform suffering from tiny market share. Cross-platform C# offers …
These are interesting times for Windows developers, with the PC in decline and Microsoft's mobile platform suffering from tiny market share.
What? Really?
The home PC may be in decline, but most C# developers are paid professionals who work for businesses where the PC is in anything but decline. I'm comfortable writing Java code, so have little to fear from the heat death of MS, but being realistic, barring "Linux on the unicorn" ever coming to fruition, the desktop PC will be around for decades, as will Windows and C#.
Java, on the other hand, is fast becoming a dead language, outside of big data and Android circles. Look at the 5 year plans for each language stack - MS are being very ambitious whereas Oracle, well, just aren't.
The mobile market I'll give you, hence my interest in Java & Android.
The primary space I've seen C# being used is in ASP.Net web applications, those, I feel, are in decline, SharePoint, The Beast That Will Not Die, being the stand-out exception.
For Enterprise Windows Desktop development, that can be a mixed bag of anything, Java, C#, C/C++, VB.Net, VBA, Erlang, COBOL.Net, etc. If you can compile it, it has and will be run on a Windows desktop.
And just about everyone makes a Windows version/compiler for their IDE.
Enterprise Windows Desktops would not be enough to save C#.
For Enterprise Windows Desktop development, that can be a mixed bag of anything, Java, C#, C/C++, VB.Net, VBA, Erlang, COBOL.Net, etc.
Java looks awful on the desktop and Java on Windows is an extremely memory hungry way to do, well, anything vs .NET. Java itself is on shaky ground anyway - the only possible future it has now is if Oracle can be persuaded to flog it to Google. If Google about face and use something else for Android, then the gig is up.
C++ may be fine for pseudo real time apps, but then, most LOB apps aren't real time. C++ will always be with us and is a wonderful language in its own right, but its not about to unseat .NET any time. Ever.
VB.NET/COBOL.NET can't exist without C#. .NET may be the framework, but C# is the language designed for that framework.
VBA.... not for anything outside of Office macros really.
Erlang... great at what it does but its aimed more at switches than desktops. The only app I've seen in 20 years as a professional that was written in Erlang and runs on Windows is RabbitMQ.
Things C# has in its no other languages have [1]:
Visual Studio - head and shoulders above all other IDEs, and by a very long way too.
.NET integration with Windows.
Very large pool of developers.
Its MicroSoft's strategic language (No MS, no Windows, so this debate becomes moot).
Frankly, its a significantly better all rounder than any/every other language on Windows (important caveat).
[1] - Yes, all .NET languages can claim most of these, but C# is .NETs lingua-franca.
I wasn't trying to say that they were better languages, or even good, that was the point of including VBA; rather I was pointing out that with the myriad options available for writing malware software for Windows, that case alone is not sufficient to keep a language 'alive'. Pascal was arguably the best language for teaching programming, but that was not enough to keep Pascal from falling by the wayside.
The point of including COBOL.NET is that owing to the plethora of ways to code for Windows, no language ever truly dies. C# may be in for a decline, but it will not be a terminal one. It will always have a place for those that need optimal behaviour in a Windows environment, and also by those who just like it. I know I prefer it to Java, because java is not just hideous on the UI, configuring its build environment can be the stuff nightmares are made of. C# project files in VS takes a large portion of the pain out of configuring build environments.
And I will absolutely agree with you about VS, that is quite possibly the best product MS has ever made.
WPF also looks godawful on the desktop without a LOT of work (the same sort of effort that can result in actually quite nice looking Java as well, come to think of it). But see below for the amount of work that goes into most C# code....
"Visual Studio"
Yet here I am happily coding away using ObjectPascal in Visual Studio (and compiling to Java Bytecode, MSIL or Cocoa, as the mood and the project takes me). I could use Swift as well. Hint: Visual Studio has this great thing that specifically allows other languages to be hosted within it and take advantage of great Visual Studio features.
Conversely, I can write C# for JVM, MSIL or Cocoa in an OS X IDE called "Fire" and - now - other IDE's - including VS Code...
Visual Studio isn't exclusive to C# and neither is C# exclusive to Visual Studio.
".NET integration with Windows" ?
Um, .NET runs ON TOP of Windows. C# compiles to .NET*. ergo you can get to Windows with C#, but only via .NET
Even when you compile to "native" all that is really happening is that the JIT compiler has been short-circuited into the build chain and a copy of VBRUN1500 ... Um... sorry "the .NET Execution Environment" has been packaged and bundled into the app as little more magical than a self-extracting EXE.
Welcome to the 1990's.
"Better all rounder"
It's great for web sites and highly constrained and controlled enterprise deployment scenarios. But due to the complex pre-requisite dependencies and never ending round of breaking revisions to the framework it cannot exist without, it is shockingly bad for desktop apps (which also look horrible) and utilities.
And despite the fact that performance should not be a problem, due to the fact that the whole "managed runtime" approach actively encourages lazy and poor programming practices, most code produced by that "large pool" of developers is shockingly badly written w.r.t resource utilisation and performs very poorly indeed.
"Microsoft's strategic language"
Yes, this has been the case for years. And yet... and yet... in more recent years that old thing called "native" code has been getting a lot more love than it used to in something of what might be termed a "back pedalling" maneouver if not a complete about face.
[1] - I don't think "lingua franca" means what you think it means.
"Lingua franca" is a common language that all parties wishing to engage need to have .. um.. in common... in .NET that - by definition - is MSIL. The source languages that the MSIL is compiled from are the vernaculars, of which C# is just one.
I like using their IntelliJ IDEA at work when I need to (C++ developer most of the time).
But I've actually bought their CLion C++ IDE for use at home, because I bounce between Windows and Linux and it's a lot better than Qt Creator. It's nice to see they're doing the same for C# as going between VS and MonoDevelop is a bit of a pain.
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