“Microsoft’s phone chief hates to call the new Nokia Lumia 521 cheap, but the lower-priced smartphone launching in the United States is the company’s boldest move yet to win mass market share from leaders Apple and Samsung. The world’s largest software company has so far focused on putting its Windows Phone software into expensive, high-end devices – chiefly from Nokia and HTC. But the new model will go on sale at Walmart later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, relatively cheap for a new phone running up-to-date software without a long-term contract.” Windows Phone is racing to the bottom just as fast as Android – with the difference being that expensive Android devices do not fail to sell.
I have a Lumia 620, which is already cheap.
It’s already slow, and the on-screen keyboard is cumbersome at that screen size (which is not small in itself, maybe the size of a Galaxy S). Added to the fact that the phone barely supports multitasking and reopens most apps you leave instead of resuming them.. It’s not much competition at this point for Android.
And in general, the software is still extremely unpolished and crappy usability-wise.
The browser sucks, nokia maps sucks, mail app is confusing as hell, skype sucks (compared to Android/iOS), compatibility with Google services sucks and is full of bugs (And yes, it’s MS fault, Blackberry does it flawlessly on the Z10).
The app selection in the marketplace is extremely poor and of extremely poor quality, and not even their own apps work well (Office and PDF viewer can’t zoom well beyond a certain point, making it realy annoying).
Give it 2 or 3 years and it will be a decent phone, but for now it’s a baby in diapers.
That’s strange, I haven’t seen much criticism from the Windows Phone keyboard, in fact, I’ve seen a lot of people (both individuals and reviewers) mention that the keyboard is fantastic and responsive.
Often on my Android devices I would run into the situation where I’d be waiting for the keyboard to catch up with my key strokes. Is this your experience with Windows Phone?
Also, Windows Phone 8 supports auto word flow, in that if you type one word, it intelligently suggests the next word it thinks you may right. Often times it works well, or works okay-ish but I’ve found it does save me a few key strokes.
I’m unsure if you were aware of that feature, so you may want to try it out. Might make your experience better.
Do you have any suggestions for how the keyboard could be improved?
Windows Phone pervasively supports multitasking. It supports a variety of background tasks including always on turn by turn location, VOIP support, and background audio.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh2029…).aspx
Also, I rarely run into your issue where apps don’t resume where they are instantly. Here’s a list of apps I use, I’d be interesting in the ones you have that don’t exhibit this behavior.
– All stock WP apps
– Twitter
– Facebook
– IM+ Pro
– Fotor
– myTube
– USA Today
– Engadget
I do have a few which don’t, but they’re mostly WP7 apps that run on my WP8 device, or WP8 apps which don’t opt-in to the new behavior.
The fast app resume behavior (distinct from fast app switching, which all apps have via a long back press) is a breaking change which has implications for existing apps (including those ported from WP7 to WP8).
The browser, like the keyboard, is also something I’ve almost never heard complaints about since WP8 launched.
It supports most mature standards, is fast, and hardware accelerated. Whereas on Android, I’ve experienced extreme lag typing in an address bar on Chrome. Plus its never panned and pinched as smoothly as on Windows Phone.
Just helping highlight the incredible features
I’m glad I’m reaching Tony Swash’s status on OSNews where annoying little trolls like you don’t even answer the comment, instead waste time showing everyone that you can find a couple adjectives.
Your response seems like a Microsoft PR department response filled with buzz words.
The Android one is smarter by suggesting the special characters, web stuff, etc you need according to the situation, but other than that when you have to use multiple languages or more tech language, it’ just doesn’t complete those worst properly. Again, the BB10 keyboard is fantastic in comparison.
Still though, I think the problem I have is the fact that either the screen of the one I have is smaller than the bigger models, or the capacitive sensor is crappier, because I make much less mistakes on the Galaxy S.
I don’t mean background tasks, I mean keeping the damn apps open after I go do something else. Skype, Nokia Maps, GChat, al the “third party” apps just close and have to be reopened. Resuming them takes a long time, but maybe because it’s a 620 and it’s slow?
That makes more sense (though i fail to see why Nokia Maps and Skype, which are kind of first party fall into this category).
Have you used Opera, Firefox or Chrome for Android? there’s a sea of difference. Tabs are extremely cumbersome in WP8 IE, small links are harder to click/tap, and pages are not reloaded every time you go back to them (specially annoying when you are using 3G). It’s easy to tap links accidentally, which is made worse by the fact that if you go back a link and it doesn’t even scroll the previous page to the point you were reading. It’s just kind of immature in my opinion, which would be solved if Firefox or Opera were available for the platform.
Windows Phone also does this with InputScopes, it just depends on the developer to tell the OS which type of input the text field requires. You can see this in the address bar in the browser vs a text box in the Messaging app. If this is what you mean.
I can probably see where it’d be limited in multiple languages and stuff, I wouldn’t put it past MS to have a fantastic experience on select language. I really hate their geofenced approach to features.
It got better in 7.5 and 8, so hopefully the next set of updates improve the keyboard further. I think BB10 has done some fantastic work here, but hey, it is BlackBerry. If anyone’s going to make a kickass keyboard it’ll be them.
Interesting. I used a Lumia 800 last year so I’m accustomed to the 3.7inch screen, but coming from my HD7 it was a definite learning curve.
When I got my 920 I had an adjustment period where I made more mistakes due to the time it takes my muscle memory to adapt. The 620’s sensor may very well be of a lower quality, I’ve only had limited hands on time with the 620.
Could be. By slow do you mean 1-3 seconds? More? Whenever I see “Resuming…” (Its only visible when you navigate *backwards* using the back button, since the app is rehydrating, and only if the app takes forever to restore its state) its only really been for maybe a second and it happens rarely.
I think it may come down to the fact that I install more or less big name apps, if you’re giving the ecosystem a solid try and downloading apps from more questionable developers you might run into issues. There’s a lot of gunk in the Windows Phone store, but there’s also a lot of gems.
If you don’t, I suggest an app called “AppFlow”. Its an app discovery service which helps surface the gems on Windows Phone. You can also check the marketplace under “Collections” for some nice curated app selections too.
Me too. Especially for Nokia its surprising. I can confirm its a WP8 app that just doesn’t opt in to the new behavior. At first I was in favor of the opt-in feature (especially after having to fix my own app when I enabled it) but now its clear that this needs to be be the default and affected apps should opt out.
An unrelated bit about WP7 apps:
Its easier to tell on a device with a 720p screen which apps are WP7 apps because they have letterboxing. On the 920 with a 768p screen, there is no letterboxing. On an 800×480 screen you won’t ever notice unless it doesn’t resume where it left off, or it starts up slowly.
WP7 apps aren’t cloud compiled, so they’re generally going to start a little slower.
Yes, but quite some time ago. Chrome was still in Beta and still worse than the stock browser. Firefox had an odd UI and just seemed less polished. Opera I never did.
I think that Microsoft should open the platform up to more browsers via some sort of 2nd party agreement. Consider the following: Some vendors during WP7’s life time had authorization from Microsoft to use native code before it landed in the platform with WP8.
There’s no reason why Microsoft can’t white list Mozilla and Google’s browsers if they show interest. I wish they would but the reasoning behind this are likely political. It just sucks because it’d make Microsoft faster to enhance IE.
I think the main problem here is that the core apps cant update independently of the OS. Why can’t IE receive a marketplace update? or Email? or Calendar? They can on Windows 8 and it works great for out of band updates. WP8 needs to get here fast.
Chrome is now usable, although it still takes some getting used to. It’s within spitting distance of the Android browser now, if it hasn’t surpassed it.
Firefox is much, much, much better than it used to be, but it has some horrible font rendering issues, the download manager is lame, and trying to access bookmarks is a pain. Oh, and the Firefox Sync doesn’t actually work (at least on my phone).
Opera is pretty much the best Android browser out there. Especially if using lots of tabs. The download manager actually works, it handles tap-to-zoom so much nicer than the rest, Opera Turbo actually works, Opera Sync actually works, and it uses very little RAM (although with 2 GB, I wouldn’t notice if it was a pig). Unfortunately, every great thing about Opera is now gone with Opera Beta (using Blink engine).
Not that Windows Phone would have far to go, considering it’s already at the bottom.
What happened to OS news on osnews.com!!! You could have added a single line (beneath the ax-grinding) about what OS its running and specs!!
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_lumia_520-5322.php
It’s basically a Galaxy S2 (the dual-core Qualcomm version) but without the HD screen or LTE.
It’s a good starter phone, spec-wise, or a good “use until your contract runs out and you can upgrade to a new one” phone.
The only real downside I see to it is the screen res. Dual-core 1 GHz with Adreno 305 is plenty for most apps and games. But 800×480 on a 4″ screen is going to look horrible.
Even qHD (960×540) looks horrible on a 4″ screen (Droid3/4).
I think they made even worse choices than low resolution. Leaving flash out of the camera turns out flash assisted focus. Who in their right mind will want to take a picture like that?
The 620 imo is a much better value proposition, or the 720 if you can afford it.
I find Microsoft’s new ad campaign for the Win Phones hilarious (in their lack of self awareness…).
In any case, more competition = better for customers. So if Win Phones manage to put the fire on iOS and Android’s asses, then awesome.
A little over 11 years ago Microsoft bet the farm on something called The .NET Framework. It was a Windows only clone of the Java runtime environment. This turned out to be a poor decision. I (and many others) knew from the beginning it was a failure.
Then came things like:
Microsoft Zune, the iPod Clone
Windows Vista, the OSX/KDE clone
Silverlight, an Adobe Flash clone
Each one an extraordinary failure.
Today it’s:
Windows Phone, an Android and iPhone clone
Microsoft Surface, an iPad clone
Windows 8, the iOS clone.
If history is any indicator (and it always is), each of these products will ultimately fail.
.NET was the moment when things started going bad, and Microsoft is looking at finally dropping it. Maybe there is hope.
I don’t know if they’re going to kill the .NET framework. Many people bought into it and made software with it. If they simply can it, nobody will ever trust them again (not such a bad thing imo). More likely they will say something like “it’s *cough* feature complete *cough*” and put it in maintenance mode.
Things may not going look well for them in the future where mobile devices are concerned but in the present they are still making billions (not that much/any of it turns up as dividends for its shareholders)
Microsoft has doubled down on .NET with the Windows Runtime. It has made interop to and from .NET easier and made it a first class consumer of the Windows Runtime, the forward facing API for Windows. How the hell is this a sign of Microsoft dropping .NET?
.NET is constantly improving. C# and .NET have come along way since it was originally introduced, it isn’t going away and has a pretty large developer community.
The main problem of WP8 is – what does it offer that Android or iOS do not have?
I can see why Microsoft wants WP8 to succeed. Good for them. But why would a consumer want to buy a Windows Phone?
Windows 8 has tiles, b*tches love tiles…
The .NET is not a clone of the JVM, and in fact deviates from it in ways that the JVM is only now starting to catch up.
The .NET Framework has seen numerous releases, with the most recent release this past Fall. Visual Studio 2012 is written in a combination of C#, C++, and WPF using mixed mode technologies pioneered in .NET .
The Windows Phone app store with 150,000 applications are apps written in .NET, the Windows Store with 60,000 applications is almost completely filled with apps written in .NET .
Silverlight started off as WPF/E, or WPF Everywhere. It is a browser based implementation of their WPF framework which works across Windows, Linux, OSX, and Windows Phone.
The technologies pioneered in WPF and Silverlight form the core of Windows today. Windows 8 and its app model are based entirely on technologies pioneered in .NET .
The metadata format for WinRT is .NET metadata, the entire API surface is inspired by things in .NET and C# like async/await, Generics, and attribute based programming. C++/CX? Inspired by C# .
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s newest $1 Billion dollar business uses primarily .NET for its PaaS offerings.
The .NET Framework has spawned a vibrant community (Codeplex, Nuget, various hubs around the internet) which is basically Microsoft’s personal developer army.
According to Microsofties, there were around 8 MILLION .NET developers a year ago.
How in hell is this even remotely considered a failure, especially when you take into account the fact that Silverlight is a portable version of .NET called CoreCLR. CoreCLR now forms the basis for the .NET framework in WinRT and on Windows Phone.
.NET has been one of Microsoft’s unmistakable successes. It just defies logic that you’d claim otherwise. It was the best strategic move for the Developer Division in decades.
This is why people who have no idea what .NET is shouldn’t talk about .NET .
The Surface has made Microsoft a couple hundred MILLION dollars in less than a quarter with limited availability (The Surface Pro is available in the US, Canada, and very recently China). Even then, some reports had Windows 8 up to 7.5% of the market.
Surface Pro retails for $800 dollars. Microsoft’s ASP on their tablet offerings are incredibly high, to the point where they can extract quite a bit of revenue from a modest amount of volume.
That’s awesome, apparently Microsoft found a way for tablets to design, manufacture, and sell themselves at no cost…
Nelson,
“The .NET is not a clone of the JVM, and in fact deviates from it in ways that the JVM is only now starting to catch up.”
I found the framework and design of .net was almost a blatant ripoff of java. I’d be surprised to find many .net features that didn’t already exist in java first. MS built .net because they failed in capturing the java market with their proprietary java variant J++.
That said, I’ve always liked .net language syntaxes much better than java. Java’s designers refused to address certain widespread criticisms, among them checked exceptions and unnecessarily tedious typecasting frequently put me off when prototyping. Java had a duality of official GUI frameworks, but the Java2D classes didn’t work in applets. Also, there was a big regression for write once & run everywhere in mobile applications (not through any fault of sun, still a real set back though).
I’d say c# is a serious contender for being my favorite programming language, but neither windows nor IIS are particularly compelling for the web work I do. Microsoft obviously has conflicted interests, but if they would support .net on linux I would be all over it.
Some companies want their sites hosted on a Microsoft webserver. I never understood why. Unless of cause you’d like to play Minesweeper on that server 😉 The monolithic nature of Windows makes programs complex and vulnerable. And you can’t compile custom kernels, so you’re stuck with “everything & the kitchen sink”.
Could it be that this monolithic nature (in contrast to the modular Unix-approach) is a big reason behind the slow development of WP8?
Edited 2013-05-04 09:52 UTC
Would you care to provide actual quantitative examples to the qualitative claims you just made?
C# was Java done right, tbh I don’t care where it came from it is irrelevant.
Also Java != JVM.
There is always mono, though I don’t really understand what is wrong with IIS and Windows.
Edited 2013-05-05 17:26 UTC
lucas_maximus,
“C# was Java done right, tbh I don’t care where it came from it is irrelevant.”
It’s irrelevant to you maybe, but it wasn’t irrelevant in the context of the thread discussing the relationship between the two.
“Also Java != JVM.”
You don’t need to tell me, although two were designed completely with each other in mind as evidenced the name “Java Virtual Machine”.
“There is always mono, though I don’t really understand what is wrong with IIS and Windows.”
In my opinion linux has an advantage with lightweight remote administration tools like ssh/rsync/etc. Obviously windows can do the same things, and you can use remote desktop, but the whole GUI on the server is kind of unnecessary and out of place. With linux, we get the flexibility of provisioning a machine with only the pieces we need.
In any case this wasn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about how many linux developers would like to offer official .net support using linux (count me in). I can’t blame microsoft for not supporting linux though since if they did many IIS hosting providers would promptly switch to linux. Windows/IIS has few compelling advantages in the server space (note that this is rather different than saying anything is “wrong with IIS and windows”).
This is pretty much rubbish since Server 2008 R2. You can install any part you need. Also the GUI isn’t doing anything when it isn’t being accessed … I never understood why this was a big deal, it isn’t exposed to the outside world (only through RDP).
Microsoft would indeed get nothing out of it. However if you want to support on a Linux Server for a competing web technology (Java/PHP/RoR) etc you are going to be probably paying someone else e.g. Redhat.
I am sure we could argue over pricing options, but it comes into swings and roundabouts after we actually add licensing into the equation.
I don’t work in the server space, but I doubt it is only a “few compelling advantages”. I personally like the fact that I don’t have to dick about with editing text files to set basic options.
Edited 2013-05-06 08:31 UTC
lucas_maximus,
“This is pretty much rubbish since Server 2008 R2. You can install any part you need. Also the GUI isn’t doing anything when it isn’t being accessed … I never understood why this was a big deal, it isn’t exposed to the outside world (only through RDP).”
It’s a matter of flexibility, whether it’s important to you or not, linux obviously has the upper hand on customization.
“Microsoft would indeed get nothing out of it.”
Indeed. If microsoft were broken up such that each division were free to do what it could without being conflicted with the grand scheme of microsoft’s monopoly, I think we’d see greater innovation and competition among those individual divisions. But alas this is all hypothetical since it wouldn’t make much sense for microsoft as a singularly controlled entity to allow divisions to betray itself.
“I don’t work in the server space, but I doubt it is only a ‘few compelling advantages’. I personally like the fact that I don’t have to dick about with editing text files to set basic options.”
Ok then, what are the compelling advantages for windows&IIS on a server other than .net support? Linux has a higher learning curve, but most who learn it don’t regret it one bit. In any case we also have some good graphical configuration wizards for anyone who wants them. Webmin, for example, allows you to provision your services much like you would a router or firewall. You can even configure it to control multiple servers from one control panel (similar to mmc). Much of it boils down to personal preferences, of course.
You have to wonder for a the usual use cases in which you would be using .NET how many of those configurations matter.
What you get on the other hand is a lot of support and you benefit from the integration of the products. As I said it is swings and roundabouts. Infinite configurability is only good for about a few use cases.
I not saying what the benefits are, but I doubt it is just .NET or cost of training.
Personally I have done a lot of Linux stuff and I thought it was a faff for the most part and I did look after quite a few servers via SSH. But I am a developer these days.
lucas_maximus,
“What you get on the other hand is a lot of support and you benefit from the integration of the products. As I said it is swings and roundabouts. Infinite configurability is only good for about a few use cases.”
We both know .net would host fine on linux if ms cared to make it run fine. The additional configuration of linux platforms can be useful from DIY tinkerers to ISPs to web hosts to datacenter deployments. The problem you have is that you think MS should anticipate everybody’s needs and that everyone should just accept what MS has decided for them, not all of are comfortable with this arrangement.
There would be benefit to some customers running .net on linux, in fact I think *most* existing .net users who buy managed hosting services couldn’t care less that it runs windows in the datacenter. As long as they have a usable control panel and can deploy their .net services, windows is completely irrelevant.
“I not saying what the benefits are, but I doubt it is just .NET or cost of training.”
Isn’t that shallow? I mean, above you doubted that windows&iis has few compelling advantages, but now your not able to say why. If a business already has windows servers + windows admins + windows expertise, then they could require some additional expertise for the linux server. But if you already have linux nodes in your datacenters then you’ve already got that covered and since there’s no compelling reasons to run windows on hosting servers the main differentiating factor would become platform price. I’m very confident that if .net was not under the MS monopoly umbrella, that MS would have a great deal of competition with .net users running linux (including me).
There is already .NET on Linux it is called Mono and it is supported.
I don’t know the compelling advantages because I don’t know the requirements of this fantasy business case.
A linux based solution might some set of requirements fine, in other areas it might not.
I can’t talk about the pros and cons of a particular situation without knowing the specific requirements. Speculating otherwise is just silly.
What I can say is that Windows Server probably has some advantages over Linux in quite a few situations. Otherwise it wouldn’t be chosen.
Edited 2013-05-07 13:52 UTC
lucas_maximus,
“There is already .NET on Linux it is called Mono and it is supported.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t mono’s ASP.NET implementation 2 or 3 versions behind microsoft? Anyways, running an unapproved clone for production uses is a liability concern, most large businesses will demand officially supported platforms to consider it, which is an unfortunate but reasonable stance.
Latency and politics aside, do you know if visual studio fully integrates with mono? A big perk of using Visual studio is it’s remote debugging capabilities.
No they aren’t, in fact they can move faster and are ahead in some things.
Mono is its own framework and is supported by the mono team, that is how Xamarin make their money. It depends what application you are supporting.
Xamarin has their own studio, I used it a bit. It isn’t visual studio but is pretty decent.
http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/getting_started
I would start there if I was you.
Edited 2013-05-07 16:06 UTC
lucas_maximus,
“No they aren’t, in fact they can move faster and are ahead in some things.”
I didn’t realize their asp.net compatibility was so far along. A few years ago things were patchy when I investigated it but this is good to know.
http://mono-project.com/Compatibility
http://www.mono-project.com/MoMA
“I would start there if I was you.”
I’m not really “starting”, since I’ve already been using visual studio and asp.net on windows, but this might change the way I work with .net. Assuming all the technical barriers are gone, that only leaves the political ones. I have a client I might be able to convince to switch, I’ll let you know after I’ve had time to investigate it (in another thread obviously since since one’s run it’s course)
Edited 2013-05-07 21:18 UTC
I think the solution isn’t so black and white anymore, especially for the cloud computing space where hybrid clouds are becoming easier to deploy.
Having a hybrid PaaS and IaaS on Windows Azure gives me the most flexibility. Azure has great PaaS offerings like Service Bus and SQL Azure while being able to load a Linux VM with a great open source offering that isn’t on Azure.
Also: Azure supports a host of languages, including PHP and Node with a simple REST based API
The biggest win here is the pragmatic developer who realizes the strength of Platform as a Service but understands that getting there is a long process. Azure IaaS lets you move your Linux infrastructure into the Cloud and manage it with tools familiar to you, all while having it accessible to Azure PaaS solutions.
This also extends to having an on premise and off premise solution using a VPN.
So I’d argue that moving forward, it doesn’t matter what you use. Use the solution that makes the most sense to you for the tools and platforms you’re invested in. Its a tall ask to tell a Linux guy to move to Azure back when it was just a set of .NET APIs on top of a Cloud. Now its much more rich than that.
You’re going to have to say exactly why the .NET Framework is a “blantant rip off”. The only commonality between the two is that they’re two languages which use a VM.
Its important to consider the fact that JVM as it is now, is not the JVM as it was 10 years ago. The same is true of the CLR, but when the CLR was launched it included features which leapfrogged the JVM in fundamental ways.
The way the metadata and bytecode are structured in the CLR are very different from the JVM internally, and if you read some of the papers published around that time, you can see the rationale for the differences. The JVM wasn’t even JIT compiled at the time when the CLR came out.
Even today, the CLR and the JVM diverge in important ways. HotSpot supports dynamic recompilation of hot paths in the application and iirc still falls back to the interpeter under a host of scenarios. The CLR supports a straight up JIT compiler, some AOT options with NGEN, and Cloud Compilation using new machine specific IL on Windows Phone.
I think its more fair to say that the CLR was inspired by the JVM and other technologies at the time, but a rip off or a knock off clone? I think that is unfair, given how different they are architecturally.
C# similarly included some concrete improvements, though this is a little closer to Java, likely for familiarity.
Edited 2013-05-06 15:25 UTC
Neson,
“You’re going to have to say exactly why the .NET Framework is a ‘blantant rip off’. The only commonality between the two is that they’re two languages which use a VM.”
I said almost a blatant ripoff. Not just the managed code ideas but the class frameworks as well, coming from a Java background I remember being surprised how much of the class framework corresponded between the two, I suspect this was because MS used it’s previous java experts to design the new .net platform. That’s not a bad thing mind you, it’s just a plausible explanation of how .net was created. I would love to hear the real stories from an insider, since as outsiders, we can only guess.
“The way the metadata and bytecode are structured in the CLR are very different from the JVM internally, and if you read some of the papers published around that time, you can see the rationale for the differences. The JVM wasn’t even JIT compiled at the time when the CLR came out.”
Maybe I’m missing something, but hotspot came out in 1999 and as far as I knew it was a JIT compiler. .net wasn’t introduced until 2002.
“I think its more fair to say that the CLR was inspired by the JVM and other technologies at the time, but a rip off or a knock off clone? I think that is unfair, given how different they are architecturally.”
I’m not arguing .net didn’t have improvements, but it was often playing catch up (look at generics for example). I really don’t care who did what first, and I’m so out of date with java that I couldn’t give a meaningful comparison today anyways). All I can say is that I’m definitely happier with .net than I was with java/jvm. If you’re more comfortable saying that .net is inspired by java rather than being a java clone, I can accept that too.
The .NET BCL is a strange beast, it evolved rather organically as the capabilities of the language evolved. It is plausible that in the beginning a lot of the BCL shared some ideas with Java, but post-Generics and certainly post-LINQ this isn’t really true anymore.
But yeah, part of it was the non-Generic nature of .NET (huge miss imo) so we had a lot of ArrayList and IntList and stuff like Java, but part of it also was being familiar where possible.
I see .NET as Microsoft’s second try after the fiasco that was J++.
Yeah, I wish I knew more at the time to follow along, there was a wealth of interviews with the lead .NET architects during the hype days. Hard to come across that now, let alone the introductory PDC video.
.NET was introduced in 2000 as a preview at PDC, and Java gained official support for HotSpot in Java 1.3 iirc.
Still, my point overall isn’t that Java copied it from .NET or vice versa, but that JIT engines are diverse and two people can use the same ideas but come up with different implementations at different times.
The HotSpot VM is (imo) better than the CLR’s JIT in many ways, but more limited in others. Its true for this discussion as a whole I’d guess.
Well Generics in Java and .NET came out around the same time, but were again, different beasts. .NET generics have run time support whereas Java generics are a compile time trick.
C++ templates predates them both, so yeah, I think they all took inspiration from each other as a whole.
I think Sun had some *really* good ideas, but just didn’t have the talent or drive to see it out. Microsoft had the vested interest of Windows pushing their agenda forward with .NET.
I don’t normally like splitting hairs or playing semantics, its just rip off as the OP did has some pretty obvious negative connotations.
That said, I’m going all-in on C++11 at the moment. Its pretty awesome how far that language has come, and how much faster its being worked on now. Exciting stuff.
Edited 2013-05-07 13:56 UTC
Nelson,
“I see .NET as Microsoft’s second try after the fiasco that was J++.”
Agree.
“Still, my point overall isn’t that Java copied it from .NET or vice versa, but that JIT engines are diverse and two people can use the same ideas but come up with different implementations at different times.”
Yea, many people have the same ideas. How’s the expression go, smart people think alike?
“I think Sun had some *really* good ideas, but just didn’t have the talent or drive to see it out. Microsoft had the vested interest of Windows pushing their agenda forward with .NET.”
I think they had talent, but they couldn’t compete. Linux (a true clone in every sense of the word) just gobbled up their market share until they basically vanished. Their java strategy turned out not to be so viable with their cash cow gone.
“That said, I’m going all-in on C++11 at the moment. Its pretty awesome how far that language has come, and how much faster its being worked on now. Exciting stuff.”
It certainly makes circles around PHP, haha.
I’m definitely not the biggest fan of MS, but wasn’t just last year people were complaining that MS was trying to make everything .Net? On a personal note I find C# to be such a joy to use that I use it to program linux software more than Windows software.
Brought to you by Microsoft®
My other post was sponsored by Google too apparently.
I need to quit reading articles on Microsoft. There is too much FUD and AstroTurfing in the comments from Microsoft trolls.
windowshasyou,
“I need to quit reading articles on Microsoft. There is too much FUD and AstroTurfing in the comments from Microsoft trolls.”
It gets annoying, I know; It’s all the platforms really. Sometimes there’s a good balanced discussion, other times the extreme fanatics get offended at anyone who posts any rational criticisms and even middle of the road opinions on their platform as though it were some sacred offense. I’m not sure they realize how unconvincing their arguments are when they are being so aggressively one sided.
Maybe a feature would be a filter to hide posts of all the religious nuts, but the problem with that is that sometimes their posts really are insightful (on topics which aren’t affected by their dogmatic world view).
Edited 2013-05-04 05:58 UTC
When I said “religious nuts” I didn’t mean that literally, I meant people who act as though their operating system were religious. I didn’t mean it to be offensive as worded.
Funny how you feel you must explain yourself; is it so risky to say “religious nut” over at your place? ;p