Do other languages have a chance?

I notice very little activity outside C# and VB.NET. This forum is a good example of the issue! Having coded in the above and JavaScript.NET I can see why, JavaScript is not a Visual Studio language which makes it less productive (if you're using VS). I thought .NET might be the saviour of a lot of languages. (Haskel and Mondrian look interesting for example and there are still a few people out there wanting to use FORTH.) Instead I see a bilingual (C# and VB.NET) culture arising and other languages may have a hard time getting "mind share". I've also seen a surprising number of attempts to assassinate VB.NET by people who presumably can tolerate only one language (C#). Odd behaviour! What are other people's views on how the language landscape will pan out over the next few years??

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Not all languages are familiar to or applicable for web developers, so they may not necessarily be best for ASP.NET. However, if someone wrote a business object or something in, say, FORTH, you could integrate it into the site pretty easily. One language that might get some use in the web environment is Perl.NET from ActiveState, because it lets Perl page developers use ASP.NET easily.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

There is a lot of COBOL code still out there. Fujitsu makes COBOL.Net. Lots of places will try to move their old COBOL into .net to reuse the business logic.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Borland is actively working on a .NET version of their Delphi language: Delphi for .NET compiler preview Using Delphi as a script language for ASP.NET I, personally and professionally, can't wait for Delphi.NET to be released. It will make life much easier in our company, as we can all use the same language to create what we want. Be it programs or websites! Cheers, Sven Glazenburg

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

I've discovered FORTRAN.NET a few weeks ago. I think this can be successful in universities... Other languages such as Perl and Python will have success as well (in my opinion).

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Eiffel.NET has implemented "true" multiple inheritance. (The compiler does some tricks to make it single for CLR, but the Eiffel developer is exposed to the multiple inherits.)

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

A lot of veteran programmers may prefer some of these older languages (Fortran, etc) but I think a lot of new developers, like me, will prefer VB.net because it is easier. Java convertees and C fans will probably prefer C#.net.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Sven, I was wondering if you know where I could download the delphi.net compiler. I've read the article on the borland website about the compiler but I couldn't find it anywhere in order to try in vs.net. Do you know how vs.net compares to delphi 7 studio ??? thanks, Djindo

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

I would like to see PERL.Net and J#.Net (or a Java.Net) make it's popularity. However I figure there are more people who can help knowing c# than the other(at least for now.) I would consider myself a veteran of Pascal, so hearing of Delphi.Net sparks me. Anyway, being beginner/intermediate of Java I decided C# was most familiar and easily accesible at this time.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

--Do you know how vs.net compares to delphi 7 studio ??? May be interesting to look here: http://www.borland.com/delphi/pdf/del7_feamatrix.pdf Regards

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

If I had a simple way to plug Delphi into VStudio I would give it a spin (provided I could test without shelling out any money other than my valuable time!). From a quick look I see no evidence that this is currently possible. I also wondered whether it would EVER be possible.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Hi Paul. Your statements about Eiffel.NET and multiple inheritance are somewhat intriguing and we've had a conversation going recently in this thread on the subject of inheritance: http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=67477 I was hoping we could entice you to pop in and give your two cents on the matter of how some of the "messy" issues of inheriting two different object get taken care of in Effiel?

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

The Delphi IDE has arguably been very good all along, but the new version has some cool features that VS might never see: e.g. fwd/reverse engineering of UML. Not saying that delphi is better than VS, but certainly hope it doesn't get "plugged into" VS--the IDE has a lot of merit on its own. I understand C# and Delphi have some common origins, and the similarities are striking, so I think that Delphi is going to lose a lot of ppl to C#.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

One of the first languages I learned besides Pascal was SmallTalk. This was a great and easy to learn OO Language. I thought I remember hearing that this language would offer a .NET version. Does anyone know if this and true, and if so, where can I find information on it. Thanks

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Steve, SmallTalk for .NET is S#. I don't think it's out yet. Here's an article: http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/10921

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Someone here mentioned Fortran.NET. How well will it do? I thought Fortran was good because it was targeted for number cruching and is well optimized for that. But if it gets converted into IL and then later into machine code for execution, then there are no special optimizations. Will it still be useful? Just asking. Also, I saw A# (ADA.NET). My quesiton on that is, I thought the US Dept. of Def. needed a language that had strict real-time, fault-tolerance, and mission-critical requirement? Later it was expanded into a general purpose language. But I think for A#, it'll probly be more for nastalgia or as a hobby for those who want to toy the language... what do you think? Just asking. Delphi.NET looks interstesting. I hope it'll be the same Delphi. What I don't know, I'm hoping some of you may, will they port a clone of the VCL into a .NET namespace? That's, IMHO, what makes Delphi what it is, especially to those of us who have learned it and use it. Just asking. I like programming win32 assembly. I've seen an effort of someone to port MASM to MASM.NET, primparily for ASP.NET. Don't know what ever happened to it. Anyone know? Thanks, _Shawn

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

I started playing with OCAML and noticed a link that pointed to Microsoft where there was a paper on F#. It's basically an implementation of OCAML, I believe. I still program occassionally in LISP and would love to see LISP.NET. If there is an implementation people will use it, especially those already familiar with it. Rob

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

There have been several languages ported to the JVM, and these could probably also be changed to target MSIL/CLR. This is a boon for language developers for two reasons. First, it gets pretty close to "write once run everywhere," as Sun is always proclaiming for Java. Second, you have a JIT compiler on most platforms that do some optimization for you. So writing your compiler back end is easier with only one or two targets. The bad news is that besides the syntax, languages have semantics. VB.NET and C# were defined in parallel with the CLR, so their language semantics are compatible with the CLR and the program is fairly easily translated into MSIL and the .NET Framework class libraries. FORTRAN should take some shoe-horning to put it into the CLR. Its a procedural language instead of an O-O language so there's a big impedence mismatch. But FORTRAN is old enough that its a fairly simple language so not a big problem to translate. COMMON areas probably become singleton classes in the CLR, and similar tricks. On the other hand, C is a real pain, since the CLR basically prohibits pointer arithmetic. Ada has a problem, because of the multiprogramming features built into the language. This means that you have to jump through lots of hoops, meaning lots of excess code to execute, in order to get the languages semantics working acccording to definition in the CLR environment. This slows down and bulks up the programs. This is made worse when you take the typical "good programming practices" of those languages into this environment. So you end up having programmers who know a language and are very skilled and productive at it, finding that they are faced with three problems. First, they have a language implementation that has many, often very subtle, semantic differences that they have to learn and work around. Think riding a bicycle with wobbly wheels--the better a bicyclist you are the more annoying it is. Second, there are going to be many .NET Framework capabilities that are beyond your reach--FORTRAN will not be able to take advantage of any objects. Third, there are going to be many .NET Framework capabilities that you can take advantage of, but only after a lot of learning curve on .NET, and learning how to twist your programming to use those features. I'm all for alternative languages where they naturally fit the problem to be solved. That makes a job soooo much easier. However, in the .NET environment, much of the "problem" to be solved is using the .NET environment, meeting users' expectation of programs in that environment, and keeping up with Microsoft's changes to that technology. Add in the tendency of businesses to want to hire young and cheap programmers who only know the latest wiz-bang language and environment, and the market for alternative languages is not real good, unless they can find a very secure niche.

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Last time I looked at various languages this is what I saw APL from Dyadic seems to have vanished from the radar (abandoned?) FORTH was still a proof of concept There were two smalltalks S# (not issued yet and may be only one person working on it) and another version (forget name) Eiffel is out there of course Two FORTRANS if I recall correctly Mondrian was still a research language (non commercial) X# had been canned and it's features are going into C# and VB.NET There is a version of Oberon (from ETH I think) may be research language Plus a variety of things from Microsoft Research A PERL that is not fully .NET from ActiveState (now taken over) A research Python that is apparently real slow and in development IronPython (from one of those involved with AspectJ) this may be really interesting Delphi.NET is available in a Borland IDE but not for VS These may not be entirely accurate but they do show a very slow emergence of real commercial languages for .NET and even fewer that have all the grunt that comes from VS integration. Then of course there's Monad but that's something different!!

Re: Do other languages have a chance?

Except for some very specialized uses, what do you think would be the advantages of there being a large number of languages available?