What's the point of .NET?

[capsulecorpjx]

Wouldn't the purpose of using a JIT Compiler intermediate to allow code to run on different OS's and Hardware? But .Net is only used for Windows/x86?

So what would be the point of using .Net, when you have this VM overhead affecting performance, as well as creating a download requirement for users (in case someone doesn't have the latest framework installed).

Also, would it ever be possible to develop a resource intensive program like a computer game using a JIT compiler like Java or .NET?

[techgnome]

I'll take a stab at this....

Wouldn't the purpose of using a JIT Compiler intermediate to allow code to run on different OS's and Hardware? But .Net is only used for Windows/x86?

Not true... there are Linux versions of the .NET framework. That's actually somethign MS got right for once. The CLR implementation is open to any organization that wants to develop a .NET framework for other platforms besides Windows. Basically they said they would take care of the Windows implementation, and if anyone else wants to develop an implementation for other OSs, they are more than welcome to do so. And that's how we end up with Mono.

So what would be the point of using .Net, when you have this VM overhead affecting performance, as well as creating a download requirement for users (in case someone doesn't have the latest framework installed).

It's no different than needing the Java VM to run Java apps.... granted the resource requirements are a bit more than the JVM, but that's because entire .NET FW is wrapped up together (as opposed to being segmented, allowing you to get only the bits you need - allegedly there's something in the works to assist with this.)

Also, would it ever be possible to develop a resource intensive program like a computer game using a JIT compiler like Java or .NET?

Probably not... for the truly intensive stuff like that, C/C++ will reign king. I doubt that will change any time soon.

.NET isn't the silver bullet... it's not the end all-be all.... it's jsut merely another tool. Use the right tool for the right job, and no one gets hurt.

-tg

[mendhak]

The point of .NET is to provide us developers with a framework to make the creation of applications easier. It's a framework. Combined with Visual Studio, it allows for rapid application development for the enterprise business.

[Hack]

And, whether it is good, bad or indifferent, Windows is pretty much the standard OS for both corporate and home use and as long as that holds true, development platforms will be targeted for that environment.

[dilettante]

.Net is Anders Hejlsberg's second attempt at creating a private version of Java. The first was VJ++ and it got Microsoft sued by Sun. The second one had enough input from lawyers to avoid a successful lawsuit.

The goals were fairly simple: create a Java that had certain improvements, including tons of extensions that made it more efficient on Windows than standard Java. Also avoid the optimizations in Java's bytecode instructions that make it more optimal for the Sparc processor architecture than anything else.

Large parts of the Framework consists of wrappers on Win32 and COM functionality in Windows. This is where portability breaks down. Over time more and more of the Framework is ported to other OSs though, which has improved portability over time.


One thing Java and .Net have in common is to "sandbox" or "manage" code and the heap and hide pointers. This is meant to help prevent things like buffer overrun and stack overflow exploits. VB6 was always nearly as safe unless people foolishly used RTLMoveMemory() and similar API calls, but there was no way VB was ever going to appeal to the curly braces crowd. Also consider that Anders' other famous effort was Delphi, which was originally code-named VBK: "Visual Basic Killer."

C# allows "unsafe code" that can use actual pointers to memory though for some kinds of micro-optimization and to get directly to memory when required. All about Unsafe Code in C#