[bulug] Re: an insidious idea...
- From: "Likai Liu" <likai.org@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bulug-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:53:34 -0400
Eclipse/MinGW/QT4 is not a list, but a whole stack of application
development. What I had in mind was a direct comparison to VS/MSC/MFC.
Eclipse is just an IDE. It doesn't have a built-in compiler (so use
MinGW, a port of GCC). It doesn't have a UI library either (so use QT4
for that).
Haven't considered .NET, but I assume Mono has something interesting
to offer. And I'm sure that Java, being Eclipse's native language, is
the most comfortable to use.
I think your comment about people only being capable of handling VB is
presumptuous. My first two programming languages were x86 assembly and
gwBasic. I particularly liked gwBasic because it had an easy-to-use
graphics system, so even a beginner could draw something interesting
on the screen (much later on I also figured out how to drive the video
card and draw in frame buffer in assembly, but that's beside the
point). I think the modern analogy of gwBasic would be HTML (possibly
with canvas) and JavaScript. Maybe Adobe Flash.
VB really excels (haha) at building UI with database connectivity, but
I don't see much use of it outside of small businesses that need to
develop something quick and dirty in house. Nowadays we can have JSON
straight out of SQL results, and you can build things in HTML and
JavaScript reasonably at ease. We're not talking about Linux or POSIX
anymore, by the way.
Having said all this, I'm not sure what Microsoft plans to achieve
with this DreamSpark initiative. All of our lab computers in the CS
department have Visual Studio.NET installed, and any student could use
MSDNAA to grab free and full copies of Visual Studio.NET and many
versions of Windows and their SQL server. Your average CS student can
graduate without using Linux at all.
Microsoft is the one that always has had the popular influence, so it
never makes sense to talk about swaying people into Microsoft (maybe
to make them more loyal). It's about swaying away from Microsoft that
matters. I liken this to how Universal, Warner and EMI are not the
only source of good music, and that people should seek out independent
artists.
DreamSpark suggests that Microsoft is now trying a more grass-root
approach to promote their developer tools, possibly in the fashion how
open source is spread. I'm assuming that they're just panicking over
the proliferation of open source developer tools, and that's why I
think we can irritate them more on that front. :)
But no, Linux is not a threat to Microsoft. The Web is the threat.
liulk
2008/4/11, Geoffrey Mishkin <geoff@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Eclipse is the only thing on that list that can compete with VS.NET. I'm
> guessing that the kind of people Microsoft is going after with those kinds
> of events are new programmers who are not already specialized in one
> programming language or another, and distributing Express editions of
> VS.NET. In general people like that are not going to see the point in
> learning relatively unpopular class libraries (Qt) or using command line
> compilers (MinGW). Also, if Microsoft is pushing the Visual Basic .NET
> aspect of it as opposed to C#, there's not much on Linux like that (VB
> sucks, yeah yeah). And to be honest, some people can only handle Basic, so
> it's probably best for them to stick with VB.NET.
>
> Of course your serious programmers (in CS majors and probably ECE) have
> already had to learn software development on Unix-like systems, so they
> wouldn't really be swayed by Microsoft as easily, I don't think they're who
> we want to target. If we did, a second offering called "modern tools for
> software developers on Linux" or something, with Qt 4 and a GUI debugger
> setup and other modern tools for Linux might be helpful to those who are
> still doing everything in C and writing their own linked list
> implementations for each program.
>
> I think a better combination for new users would be Eclipse to show how C#
> isn't the only language of Windows and MonoDevelop to show how people can do
> .NET development on operating systems other than Windows. You mentioned CDT
> but where Eclipse really shines is JDT, so why not push the Java /
> cross-platform aspect? Unless you're careful, the C code that you write in
> Eclipse on Windows won't run on other operating systems. You're writing
> something and you can't find the standard library function you want, so you
> say "screw it, I'll just use the Win32 API version, it's so much easier",
> #include <windows.h>, and you're done for. Regardless of your feelings on
> Mono, you have to admit that their IDE is pretty slick and could go a long
> way to encouraging people who are on the edge of switching to Linux, but who
> if went with VS.NET would be stuck on Windows forever.
>
> As far as doing it right next to Microsoft I think that would be pretty
> funny.
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