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Comment by Groxx

3 months ago

To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields.

They've effectively dropped it a couple times in the past, and while they're currently putting effort in, the company as a whole does not seem to care about stuff like this beyond brief bursts of attention to try to win back developer mindshare, before going back to abandonment. It's what Microsoft is rather well known for.

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Groxx

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bmitc  3 months ago

.NET is one of the easiest to install and robust cross-platform systems out there. It's actually very impressive. I don't know of a single other platform that nails cross-platform so well.

The effort of .NET Framework to .NET Core to .NET 5 and now up to .NET 9 is well over a decade long of steady and increasing progress.

  • homebrewer  3 months ago

    Compared to OpenJDK, dotnet:

    1. only supports the three main operating systems and two architectures (or four if we're stretching things and being very generous)

    2. large parts of it still don't work anywhere but Windows (UI being the primary one)

    3. the level and quality of official tooling provided for Linux and macOS is incomparable to their Windows offerings

    No, its cross-platform story is far from the best we have.

    https://wiki.openjdk.org/display/HotSpot/Ports

    • bmitc  3 months ago

      For (2), this is often misunderstood and mistated.

      The JVM includes no GUI framework. .NET also includes no GUI framework. .NET happens to have a specific framework for Windows. But just like the JVM, there third-party GUI frameworks such as MAUI, Uno, Avalonia, and others.

      So no, there's isn't a "large part" of .NET that isn't cross-platform.

      > 3. the level and quality of official tooling provided for Linux and macOS is incomparable to their Windows offerings

      What are you referring to here?

neonsunset  3 months ago

> To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields.

This is provably wrong, unless you want to insist despite the facts because that's what your social bubble tells you to do.

The most popular deployment target for .NET is Linux: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry

Equating whatever else MS is up to with the way .NET evolves and is managed is no different to equating YouTube and Golang.

  • Groxx  3 months ago

    People use Microsoft open source stuff, definitely. It's fairly often decent or better.

    But Microsoft's most consistent legacy across its entire existence has been Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Any Linux-supporting project is directly opposed to their core business, aside from Azure - if it starts becoming a threat, they'll turn it into a way to force people onto their other money-makers.