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Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 05:14:40PM +0100, Steven Côté wrote: > >>> what does .net allow me to do, run applications within a browser, i >>> >>> never really understood all of this, I am not a programmer. >>> >> Well, I am a programmer and I fail to understand it as well, so don't feel >> bad. >> > > It’s nothing to do with running stuff in a browser (though there’s no > reason it can’t be used for that). > > It’s basically a virtual machine, like Java’s, and languages to run on > it. There are a few different languages that run on it — C#, VB.NET, > etc., as well as Java and Python compilers for it. > > Of course, there are several different languages that run on the Java > VM, too (Scala and Groovy come to mind), and Java and the Java VM don’t > have the same patent issues attached. > > >> I had a chance to sit down with a friend of min the other week and he tried >> to explain to me why .net was awesome and he failed to come up with a single >> technical reason that could not be met using existing technology. >> > > i.e. Java? Notice how Sun and MS were involved in a lawsuit over Java, > and then MS came out with a suspiciously similar platform of their own. > I don’t know of any reason to use .NET over Java, and I don’t even like > Java. > You don't need to use either Java or .NET or any other 'VM' type approach. Its technically quite easy to set up JavaScript/Browser to call the libraries on your machine to do all the things you like to do - how else do you think Flash and Silverlight work? The only reason why we don't is because companies have either together or singularly prevented the standards orgs from agreeing on standards to do this, and by providing their own 'solutions' helped redirect effort away from the optimal (for the user and in most cases the developer) solutions. In My ideal world we'd have had an Object Oriented JavaScript with JIT for the browser and compiler for system side to link in client side stuff in a standards compliant way - through mime types for video etc. I'd also like the same JS engine for sever side on apache (for me) so I could stick to one language for programming, and one operating system (i.e. no VM's) for doing 'other' work. Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html