CXXI: Bridging the C++ and C# worlds.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Dec-19.html

by jstedfast • 15 years ago

47 18 15 years ago

I feel like the work Miguel De Icaza is and has been doing around C# platform interop is some of the most challenging and beneficial work happening in the FOSS. It is pretty startling what he and his team have accomplished in such a short period of time, in some ways actually hearing where the C# language is going from Microsoft and getting out ahead of the curve.

ComputerGuru6• 15 years ago

This is incredible work. Props to Miguel & co. for pulling this off; it's just a damn shame that Microsoft just can't seem to decide where they want to go with C#/.NET.

While the C# language has become one of the very best (as a language not a framework) with version 4, .NET seems to be tottering on the edge of oblivion.

omellet2• 15 years ago

While I think it's a shame that .NET is so Microsoft-centric, I see no evidence for it "tottering on the edge of oblivion." Can you elaborate?

ComputerGuru6• 15 years ago

The only "safe" .NET framework to use for development is version 2.0. Thankfully, with VS2010 you can compile C# 4.0 (the language version) against the .NET 2.0 Framework.

Since 2.0, Microsoft has engaged in random "experiments" with the .NET framework, taking it in random directions then killing those projects off and starting again. XAML/WPF is the best example, where Microsoft begged the world to stop using System.Windows.Forms (standard Windows widgets/controls) and to switch over to vector-based XAML/WPF where each project needs a developer + a completely separate designer to have any chance of making a half-decent looking project.

Some developers (myself included) never made the switch - good call, because today WPF is dead thanks to a) it was a stupid call in the first place and b) it was very badly implemented, introducing incredible lag, requiring lots of memory, and generally resulting in a bad user experience.

Their other problem is with distribution/versioning. New versions of .NET tend to be released a month or so after new versions of Windows - meaning you'll never get Windows shipping out of the box with the latest version of .NET. While backwards compatibility is preserved (i.e. .NET 3.5 will run .NET 2.0 apps), it's very subtly broken as you'll find that a .NET 2.0 app compiled with VS2010 will actually not run on an actual .NET 2.0 distribution because no one bothered to check if the same method signatures existed for certain functions and whatnot.

Now the new challenge is Windows 8: first, Microsoft seems to be leaving .NET entirely pushing their new Metro toolkit and WinRT as the preferred routes of development. IMHO this will be a complete failure as it leaves behind both the .NET developers AND the traditional, hard-core WIN32 developers in an attempt at a "clean slate" that no one actually wants.

Even worse, .NET 4.0 in Windows 8 breaks all that backwards compatibility. Out of the box, it will not run apps compiled for .NET 3.5 and below - all .NET apps need to be recompiled to run on .NET 4, or the user will need to install .NET 3.5.

Footnote: Unfortunately, Microsoft's other good feature for .NET, Linq, was introduced in v3.5 of the .NET Framework. If you're targeting Framework 2.0, this is the one good feature you'll miss out on.

dbattaglia• 15 years ago

I don't agree with the "tottering on the edge of oblivion" line, but ComputerGuru does make an excellent point about targeting runtimes beyond 2.0. When working on the server/ASP.Net, you are fairly safe using 3.5/4.0, but when doing Windows applications its very painful. The 2.0 runtime was fairly compact and easy to redistribute. 3.5 was a beast in comparison! Even the newer "client profile" versions of the runtime are still painful when you want to build a compact installer for non-technical end users.

I really wish the latest runtime was aggressively pushed by Windows Update, but since it is not you are always in a position where you choose between a painful install process or a giant bloated installer. Not fun. Glad to be back in the web facing + internal tools side of .Net at my job now for this exact reason.

xpaulbettsx3• 15 years ago

Being able to sanely bridge to C++ code from any language is a huge deal, Miguel and the rest of the folks at Xamarin are tackling some very difficult problems and succeeding.

Especially for the games industry which Xamarin is really interested in developing for (i.e. Mono as your game's scripting engine while the core renderer is in C++), simple binding to C++ will be awesome.

CXXI: Bridging the C++ and C# worlds.

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