[KLUG Members] Mudslinging

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > And of the above UNIXes what ones have an implementation of .Net
> > available?  (Giggle now, but in 12-18 months you will be
> > *H*U*M*P*E*D*
> > without it, and the big boys know it).
> Well I do not know what .Net is but I do know that I am seeing a
> large number of jobs that are asking for knowledge in it.  I am not a
> programmer but I would like a bit of info into what makes .Net so
> special.  Can anyone explain it in laymans (non-programmers) terms?

.Net is really too things, a CLI (a virtual machine) and a large
collection of objects for performing a vast set of tasks.

The CLI is what languages compile too,  while C# is the 'cannonical'
.Net language, any language can be bound to the CLI.  There are version
of Java, Python, etc... for the CLI.  I believe there is even a project
to make the CLI a target for GCC.  The CLI is under the auspices of
ECMA, a European standards body.  Compiling to the CLI is closer to
machine level code than Java, although the details of what that exactly
mean elude me.  I do know first hand that .Net code is *FAST*,  it
certainly slaps down any Java app.

The other half of .Net is the 'collections'  These are categories of
objects used to manipulate data, connect to database, produce output,
etc...  It is really robust, well engineered, and extensible.  Where as
Java's various and many component libraries seem bolted together and
ad-hoc .Net usually presents you with what you expect to see once you've
done something else in a .Net language.  And they aren't afraid of
really long class names - like "HttpWebRequest" - I'll bet you can guess
what that does.  

And all these classes exist in each CLI language, and the CLI handles
the marshalling, type conversions, etc...  so you can move between Java,
C#, Python, and swap data around whilly-nilly.  In fact, the CLI is so
&^*&@) smart you can even suck up a native library (.so) via dllimport
and start using it with very little declaration.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3705&page=3