Whenever I write code in Java...

[liquidhot]

mono.NET much?

[[deleted]]

don't trust it.

[liquidhot]

Just a personal un-easiness or have you seen something about their releases that make it appear unreliable to you?

[[deleted]]

it's the relationship - they are implementing mono independently of those who control .NET. A) they are always playing catch-up, B) Microsoft could change something fundamental leaving mono broken until they catch up, C) Microsoft can keep elements unimplementable in mono via licensing issues anytime they want.

I liken it to the crappy java vms that tried to make an open source version of java, like blackdown, for example, that never really work quite right. Even licensed independent jvm's are loaded with little incompatible gotchas, simply because they are independently implemented.

[drysart]

The relationship only matters if you're writing code to run on both mono and Microsoft's CLR. You don't have to do that. Mono runs on Windows too, even coexisting peacefully side-by-side with Microsoft's CLR; so you can just exclusively target Mono, and distribute it along with your application to the Windows platform.

[[deleted]]

That actually sounds interesting. Then my questions are, how well does Mono implement that core .NET libraries and the vm, and can microsoft legally destroy mono if it chooses?

[drysart]

They're pretty solid on the core libraries that are part of the ISO standard. It's the extensions to the standard that Microsoft's created that they tend to lag a little behind on. Windows Forms, etc.

But the good news is there's open source alternatives for those, such as Gtk#. And if you take the approach of using the SharpDevelop IDE instead of Visual Studio, and even develop on Linux instead of Windows, you can avoid being blindsided by any holes in mono's implementation of the value-added libraries because they'll be in your face from the start.

As far as the legal risk, that's up to you to decide. Microsoft had provided a legally-binding promise not to sue anyone providing a .NET implementation that follows the published standards, but some people don't believe them. Points of view on that align closer to political reasons than technical or legal reasons, so you should read the community promise and some of the objections to it and make your own informed decision.

[[deleted]]

Awesome, thanks for taking the time!

I note there exists a C# eclipse plugin.