Comment by Someone

11 hours ago

> How .net got so many things right where java did not is a mystery to me

Part of the reason for that is that Java is older. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language)...:

“In interviews and technical papers, he has stated that flaws in most major programming languages (e.g. C++, Java, Delphi, and Smalltalk) drove the fundamentals of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which, in turn, drove the design of the C# language.”

Also, some of Java’s design warts may be there because Java was initially envisioned for much smaller devices.

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toyg  11 hours ago

This. C# was basically always meant to be "Java but done right". It came several years later, after Microsoft was legally barred from "EEE"-ing Java and required a direct competitor.

  • newsoftheday  7 hours ago

    > It came several years later, after Microsoft was legally barred

    That is an eloquent way of re-writing the history of Microsoft stealing Java and not being allowed to get away with it.

    • toyg  7 hours ago

      They didn't "steal" anything, iirc; they started as a legitimate licensee and then tried their usual embrace/extend/extinguish as "J++" (the EEE I mentioned). Sun sued for breach of license and won, barring Microsoft from extending Java outside of the (Sun-controlled) process. So they dropped it and built their own version, with blackjack and hookers.

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  • cm2187  10 hours ago

    But what I don’t get reading the original article is that they present how to insert struct in an object oriented language as an intractable problem, whereas a good implementation with .net (as far as I can tell) has been out there for nearly 30 years. And C# was shameless about stealing from other languages.

    • Someone  9 hours ago

      > how to insert struct in an object oriented language as an intractable problem, whereas a good implementation with .net (as far as I can tell) has been out there for nearly 30 years. And C# was shameless about stealing from other languages.

      I think (but may be wrong) their concerns are about the insert part. C# always had structs, Java wants to add them in a backward-compatible way. They want, for example, existing generic container classes pulled in from a .jar (i.e. already compiled) to support Java value types.

    • pjmlp  9 hours ago

      The problem is how to do it without breaking ABI, 30 years of Maven Central is very relevant, Java isn't doing a Python over value types.

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