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Comment by Const-me

2 years ago

Great point on C++, but it’s harder for C#. The language and ecosystem are IMO pretty good.

I only hate that Microsoft stopped shipping modern .NET runtime with Windows. A few annoying things though, like the recent push towards AOT compilation (IMO strictly worse that JIT), and the lack of a good first-party cross platform GUI frameworks (for example Microsoft could compile d2d1.dll with DXVK, reimplement dwrite.dll API on top of FreeType / HarfBuzz, and copy-paste UWP).

What I dislike about C# is how much effort is needed to get a minimal environment. Rust and Python make simple code compilation quick and easy.

Let's assume I want to use a C# script .csx file. The CSX filetype seems to be Microsoft's flavor of attempting to "make it simple". I write a hello world. Now what do I do with the .csx?

I have no idea how to compile that with modern dot net.

It appears csi.exe would have been the answer, but now Roslyn seems to be the current best practice. No idea what to do though

  • I'm not sure where you are coming from in terms of difficulty of setting it up, it's just

        - sudo apt install dotnet-sdk-8.0 / brew install dotnet-sdk
        - dotnet new console -o {folder} --aot
        - dotnet run -c Release
        - optionally dotnet publish -o .
    

    If you want to use it as a scripting language, you do `dotnet tool install -g dotnet-script` and use it normally[0]. Keep in mind that C# is not designed for this, but it will work (at the cost of first uncached script launch costing extra - it is a compiled language after all, but that's a niche scenario anyway).

    [0]: https://github.com/dotnet-script/dotnet-script?tab=readme-ov...

    • Thanks, I will look into the github repo. Although I think it's a bit confusing, since the steps you describe above lead to a requirement for the .net 8 runtime which leads to the following licensing information. It's not clear how to proceed with C# development as an open source language. I thought maybe it could be done by cloning Roslyn (MIT license) from github.

      Do I need to accept the below licenses to develop a C# app? I'm not asking you specifically, just that I don't care to try and understand if I can even use the language without accepting any of the below, (anything not MIT or Apache)

      License information for .NET on Windows

      The Windows distribution of .NET contains files that are provided under multiple licenses. This information is provided to help you understand the license terms that apply to your use. By using any or all of these files you agree to their associated license terms.

      The following binaries are licensed with the Windows SDK License:

      api-ms-. (used by .NET runtime, .NET 6 and earlier) ucrtbase.dll (used by .NET runtime, .NET 6 and earlier) D3DCompiler_47_cor3.dll (used by WPF)

      The following binaries are licensed with the .NET Library License

      Microsoft.DiaSymReader.Native.{x86|amd64|arm|arm64}.dll (used by .NET runtime and SDK) PresentationNative_cor3.dll (used by WPF) wpfgfx_cor3.dll (used by WPF) The following binaries are licensed with the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Software License:

      vcruntime140_cor3.dll (used by WPF)

      All other binaries and files are licensed with the MIT license

      This document is provided for informative purposes only, and is not itself a license.

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